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CCSUUGifl- DEPOSIT. 



NATIONAL 
MINIATURES 












SOME NEW BORZOI BOOKS 

HONEYCOMB 

By Dorothy Richardson 

THE OUTRAGE 

By Annie Vivanti Chartres 

MADAME SAND 

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By Joseph Hergesheimer 

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By John McClure 

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By JV. H. Hudson 

THE STAG'S HORNBOOK 
Edited by John McClure 

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By E. L. Grant Watson 








' 



NATIONAL 
MINIATURES 



BY 

''TATTLER" ^ 




NEW YORK 

ALFRED 'A' KNOPF 

MCMXVIII 



COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY 
ALFRED A. KNOPF ^ 



PBIMTXD IN THB CNITKD STATXS OT AMEBICA 



APR -6 1918 

©CI.A492H63C^ 



To 

HAROLD DE WOLF FULLER 

In luhose gallery these miniatures 
originally hung 



A WORD TO THE READER 

Few of the men and women we recog- 
nize broadly as public characters are known, 
except by name, to the mass of the people who 
have raised them to prominence. It was in 
the hope of improving this slender acquaint- 
ance that the sketches which follow were pre- 
pared by one who has passed the larger part 
of his mature life at the National Capital, 
brushing elbows almost daily with one or an- 
other of his subjects. 

These papers have been appearing serially 
in The Nation for the last three years. The 
order in which they are collected here is one 
of class and not of date, though every paper 
carries its date for the purpose of giving the 
facts noted in it their proper historical set- 
ting. 

Washington, 

January I, IQI8. 



CONTENTS 

Addams: Jane, 232 

Baker: Newton D., 49 

Bell: Alexander Graham, 267 

Bell: Gen. J. Franklin, 172 

Bryan: William J., 32 

Burns: William J., 262 

Cannon: Joseph G., 150 

Clark: Champ, 132 

Cockran: W. Bourke, 296 

Cummins: Albert B., 104 

Daniels: Josephus, 57 

Day: William R., 75 

Gallinger: Jacob H., 98 

Garfield: Harry A., 196 

Goldman: Emma, 256 

Gompers: Samuel, 285 

Goodrich: Admiral Caspar F., 184 

Hammond: John Hays, 273 

House: Edward M., 227 

James: OUie M., no 

Kahn: Julius, 162 

Kitchin: Claude, 138 



Contents 

Lane: Franklin K., 63 

Lincoln: Robert T., 244 

Lodge: Henry Cabot, 86 

Mann: James R., 144 

Marshall: Vice-President, 21 

McAdoo: William G., 43 

Peary: Admiral Robert E., 178 

Penrose: Boies, 92 

Pinchot: Gifford, 221 

Powderly: Terence V., 290 

Presidents and Premiers, 37 

Rankin: Jeannette, 156 

Root: Elihu, 126 

Scott: Gen. Hugh L., 167 

Shaw: Leslie AL, 250 

Stone: William J., 81 

Taft: William H., 190 

Tillman: Benjamin R., 116 

Tumulty: Joseph P., 26 

Underwood: Oscar W., 121 

Van Dyke: Henry, 215 

Watterson: Henry, 238 

White: Andrew D., 202 

White: Chief Justice Edward D., 69 

Whitlock: Brand, 208 

Wiley: Dr. Harvey W., 279 

Wilson: President, 15 



NATIONAL MINIATURES 



PRESIDENT WILSON 

THE psychology of popular criticism is 
well illustrated by the comments we 
continually hear on the President's 
change of front towards certain subjects of na- 
tional moment. The general theory seems to 
be that the change is very recent and rather 
sudden. For a fact, it is probably neither, but 
the product of an educational growth so grad- 
ual as to have escaped the notice of the great 
mass of the people well removed from the cen- 
tre of public affairs, though plain enough to 
observers at shorter range; and the change is 
quite as much in his attitude towards Congress 
and towards his own share in the government 
of the Republic as towards the issues which 
have lately taken on an acute phase. 

Nominated and elected as an historical 
scholar and an idealist, Mr. Wilson set out 
with the notion of bringing the Government 
back into the lines which the framers of the 
Constitution had laid down for its guidance. 
He had heard and accepted the charge, per- 
—15— 



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petually harped on by his party, that under 
Republican rule there had been a steady suc- 
cession of executive usurpations of power, 
threatening to convert a democracy into a 
despotism. He deemed it his mission, there- 
fore, to draw and maintain a rigid barrier 
between the respective domains of the legis- 
lative and executive branches of the Govern- 
ment; and as it was the American people 
that both branches were to serve, it seemed 
to him but right that the masters should 
know all the servants were doing, and know 
it at once. Hence the policy of pitiless pub- 
licity was to be linked to the principle of 
scrupulous non-interference; and the admin- 
istration started off with semi-weekly friendly 
conferences with the newspaper correspond- 
ents in Washington, at which the President 
was to submit himself to any and all proper 
interrogatories from the writers, and with 
personal and informal visits by the President 
to the Capitol, to talk over, in an easy fashion 
and a conciliatory spirit, the work that Con- 
gress and he had jointly in hand. 

How long these relations continued unim- 
paired is now a matter of history. Instead of 
—1 6— 



President Wilson 



rejoicing at such an opportunity of frequent 
and close communion with its fellow worker, 
Congress as a whole looked rather askance 
at his innovation, as if it suspected that some 
scheme of favour-seeking lay hidden beneath 
his pleasant overtures. Sundry members even 
went so far as to criticize his conduct as in- 
decorous, alleging that it squinted at the pos- 
sible use of personal influence in shaping leg- 
islation. As for the press, the experiment 
worked both ways toward failure: the Presi- 
dent discovered that, in order to make his 
meetings with the correspondents interesting 
enough to command their attendance, he must 
be prepared to go deeper into certain matters 
than he had counted on going, since the cor- 
respondents were not mere street-corner but- 
ton-holers, but, in so many instances, had 
studied current questions, and were equipped 
for their intelligent discussion; the news- 
paper men, on their part, grew weary of con- 
versations which simply skimmed the surface 
of things, and in which only one party felt at 
liberty to indulge in satirical repartee. 

The first serious conflict between the Presi- 
dent and Congress was brought about by the 
—17— 



National Miniatures 



desire of both houses to adjourn after the 
present tarifif act was passed, and the Presi- 
dent's insistence on their remaining in ses- 
sion till his program of banking legislation 
had been disposed of. This clash opened Mr. 
Wilson's eyes to the fact that not the kindliest 
manner or most persuasive tongue on the part 
of one man will overcome the efifect of the 
settled habit of five hundred men of dom- 
inating each the public affairs of his own 
little bailiwick; and that, however agreeable 
relations might continue while nothing vital 
was at stake, in time of stress the one man 
finds a stout stick in the hand worth a bushel 
of sugar plums in the ofiing. 

It can hardly be doubted that some of the 
earlier stands taken by the President, which 
at the time subjected him to most criticism 
among the people, were encouraged if not in- 
spired at his intimate counsels with the law- 
makers. The shifts-about which he has since 
made have been on his own initiative, as 
witness the way Congress has received them. 
Henceforward, having learned his lesson of 
self-dependence, the chances are that he will 
decide for himself in what path he is to walk, 
— 18— 



President Wilson 



always listening with becoming courtesy to 
adverse advice, but bearing in mind that it 
is he, and not his advisers, who would have to 
endure the chief punishment if he yielded to 
their steering and went wrong. How much 
he has taken to heart the teachings of his 
short experience is shown by his latest move, 
in meeting bluff with bluff. As he would 
himself phrase it in one of his sportive ex- 
cursions into slang, he has said in effect 
to Congress: "You talk too much! Now 
either put up or shut up !" 

One thing every Congress has to be taught: 
namely, that if it nags and worries a patient 
President into a fighting mood he has always 
the possible resort of an appeal to the people, 
and the people invariably stand by the Presi- 
dent against Congress, no matter whether 
he be wise or foolish in his position. Most 
of the talk about executive usurpation is 
bogey babble, when we get down to the bot- 
tom of it; what is decried as an attempt at 
usurpation, nine times in ten, is merely an 
effort to go ahead instead of standing still. 
Cleveland was denounced as a usurper when 
he called Congress together in a midsummer 
—19— 



National Miniatures 



extraordinary session for the plainly avowed 
purpose of passing an act to repeal the Sher- 
man silver-purchase law, and when he used 
Federal troops to protect the United States 
mail from the Chicago rioters, and again 
when, to save the nation from a confession of 
bankruptcy, he sold bonds to replenish the 
Treasury gold reserve without obtaining the 
special permission of the Congress then sit- 
ting. 

Mr. Wilson's tergiversations, therefore, may 
be traced back to his discovery that the 
course of a President, if he is going to leave 
the country at the end of his term further 
advanced than he found it at the beginning, 
must make his dealings with a shuffling, 
slack-twisted Congress more masterful than 
meek. He has carefully reserved the right, 
as a man of sober thought rather than of 
stubborn vanity, to change his mind as often 
as he is convinced that he is wrong; but on 
the point of subserviency it is safe to pre- 
dict that he will never change back to his old 
position now that he has tasted some of the 
satisfactions of freedom. 

Washington, March i6, igid. 



-2 



VICE-PRESIDENT MARSHALL 

OUR Vice-President, whose native State 
of Indiana is washed by the billows of 
the Ohio and Wabash rivers, comes 
thus naturally by a naval policy of his own. 
As nearly as it can be made out from fragmen- 
tary reports, he disbelieves in building any 
more giant warships, if a submarine cost- 
ing only $700,000 can destroy a super-Dread- 
nought costing ten times as much. Though 
this declaration may not change the Govern- 
ment's course, it will attract attention because 
it came from him, for Mr. Marshall is the sur- 
prise — slangy critics call him the ^'singed 
cat" — of the present Administration. From 
a man with a rather low, wide forehead, a 
heart-shaped face, and a not impressive 
amount of avoirdupois, they had not expected 
much; but for a fact, few men who loomed 
upon public life as lately as he have been more 
frequently quoted. 

Imagine the late John James Ingalls, of 
— 21 — 



National Miniatures 



Kansas, reduced in stature by about a foot 
and broadened just a trifle, his parchment skin 
supplanted by a more transparent complexion 
with live tints in it, and a genial air in the 
place of the somewhat cynical one that In- 
galls carried about with him, and you have a 
fair idea of Thomas Riley Marshall. The 
Vice-President's deliberate, clean-cut manner 
of speech is not unlike that of Ingalls, but 
its tone is more racy. In expressing dis- 
approval, Marshall is quaint where Ingalls 
was sardonic. Ingalls went to the classics for 
his metaphors, while Marshall goes to the 
street life of the provincial town. Ingalls did 
not look himself outside of his black Prince 
Albert coat, suggestive of an animated stove- 
pipe; Marshall looks hardly comfortable out- 
side of his easy-fitting sack. 

One difference between the two men is es- 
pecially conspicuous: Ingalls had the as- 
sumed dignity of the stage, used to cover a 
disposition by no means unbending; Marshall 
has a native pride over which he must always 
wear his light-mindedness as a cloak. Mar- 
shall may complain of the meaningless eti- 
quette of office, and say that he longs to put 



-22- 



Vice-President Marshall 



his feet upon his desk and smoke his cigar at 
his ease; he may crack a joke on his room at 
the Capitol as reminding him of a monkey's 
cage except that the visitors do not offer him 
peanuts; but were a political cataclysm to un- 
seat him tomorrow, you would not find him 
hiring out to a sensational newspaper as a re- 
porter of prize fights any more than he has 
been found willing to sign for a Chautauqua 
engagement unless the jugglers and yodlers 
were eliminated from the same share of the 
entertainment. 

Marshall made himself famous as Governor 
of Indiana by his success in laying out a pro- 
gram of legislation for his party, and hold- 
ing the State lawmakers up to it till he had 
got what he wanted. His victory over the 
factional leader, Tom Taggart, was a big gain 
for respectable politics thereabout, and by its 
damage to Taggart's prestige may have con- 
tributed more than has been generally sus- 
pected to the recent municipal housecleaning 
by the criminal authorities of Marion County. 
Since coming to Washington, he has won a 
reputation for personal independence which 
his friends declare places him in the states- 
—23— 



National Miniatures 



men's category, but his enemies decry as mere 
eccentricity. Though a loyal supporter of the 
President for a second term, if he has any- 
thing to say about public aflfairs he says it 
without waiting to inquire what Mr. Wilson 
thinks. He has taken the Senate's breath 
away two or three times, while presiding, by 
his presumption; once, when the Senators 
made too much noise with their chat in the 
back part of the hall, he administered a keen- 
edged rebuke to their bad manners which 
brought them to order without more ado; on 
another occasion he took Speaker Reed's 
short-cut from idleness to business by count- 
ing a quorum after a filibustering roll-call 
had failed to discover the presence of one. 

He feels no mercy in his soul for monopoly, 
but disbelieves in further anti-trust legisla- 
tion by Congress, being confident that the 
States have in their own hands all the reme- 
dies necessary, if they would forbid any cor- 
poration to do business in them which owns 
or holds the capital stock of any other cor- 
poration, or whose capital stock is owned or 
held by any other. He insists that there is 
"too much science" in the educational system 
—24— 



Vice-President Marshall 



of today, and "too little God Almighty"; but 
while he was Governor of Indiana he encour- 
aged Sunday ball-playing. In the midst of 
all the excitement over the sinking of the 
Lusitania, it was he who recalled the ancient 
legal tradition that an English ship is a bit 
of English soil afloat. And, finally, he de- 
clines to take part in jaunts for either busi- 
ness or pleasure unless Mrs. Marshall can go 
with him, as they have never been parted for 
an entire twenty-four hours during what he 
calls their "twenty years' honeymoon." 

On the whole, we have a unique character 
in our Vice-Presidential chair. 
Washington, July is, iQiS- 



—25— 



JOSEPH P. TUMULTY 

HOW large a part the Secretary to the 
President of the United States plays 
in the shaping of his chief's career 
has been shown repeatedly during the last 
thirty years. Lamont was the unobtrusive but 
always efficient adviser of Cleveland, who 
never ventured upon an important step in the 
course of public duty without "consulting 
Dan." It is true that a few of the biggest and 
finest things he did were done in defiance of 
Lamont's advice, but these were outnumbered, 
twenty to one, by the mistakes which La- 
mont's shrewd counsels saved him from com- 
mitting. Cortelyou did not fill so intimate an 
office for McKinley, who was the cleverest 
politician in the United States, with the pos- 
sible exception of his good friend Hanna, 
when he came into the White House; but for 
the preservation of some of the most dra- 
matic thoughts and most "ringing" phrases 
that history associates with the name of Mc- 
—26— 



Joseph P. Tumulty 



Kinky, the world owes Cortelyou more than 
it will ever suspect until it can wring a 
confession from his closely guarded lips. 

Roosevelt preferred his own intuitions to 
anybody's elaborated judgments, even those 
of . so faithful and far-seeing a friend as 
Loeb ; nor had he any need to employ a pub- 
licity manager; but Loeb made himself in- 
valuable by fearlessly putting on a brake 
now and then, keeping an imprudently effer- 
vescent letter in cold storage overnight, or 
reminding the President of some factor which 
was in danger of being overlooked in the so- 
lution of an imminent problem. Taft was 
too impatient of admonition or restraint to 
have made an eflfective use of a thoroughly 
competent Secretary, if he had been blessed 
with one. Wilson, also, is headstrong, and 
would not submit to much jerking at the 
curb; but when he is inclined to bolt he can 
appreciate the usefulness of a hand on the reins 
which can be trusted at least to keep him out 
of the ditch. And that hand is Tumulty's. 

Possibly Tumulty would not claim the 
credit of having "discovered" Wilson: there 
are so many aspiring Democrats who do that 
—27— 



National Miniatures 



he would be lost in the crowd. But he prob- 
ably comes nearer to deserving it than most 
of the rest. The truth is, the two men dis- 
covered each other about simultaneously, 
when Wilson appeared as a candidate for the 
Governorship of New Jersey and Tumulty 
was a comparatively new member of the legis- 
lature at Trenton. Tumulty was a progres- 
sive in a nest of hard-and-fast Democratic 
politicians. Wilson was doing the watchful- 
waiting act in a field where his rivals were 
bending all their strength to the upbuilding of 
personal ''machines" and factional "systems." 
Wilson took note of Tumulty's advanced 
ideals and his courageous and nimble-witted 
way of going at their accomplishment. Tu- 
multy recognized in Wilson a man with 
definite notions of what a Governor could do 
towards pushing forward the interests of the 
State, and it took him a very short while to 
perceive that in Wilson's success lay his own 
best hope of putting through some measures 
of legislation he had long had in mind. So, 
when Wilson sent for Tumulty and took him 
into the closest of confidence regarding the 
conduct of the campaign, it was like a case of 
—28— 



Joseph P. Tumulty 



love at first sight, and they lost no time in 
entering into a partnership which has lasted 
unstrained to this day. 

It would not require an expert like the hero 
of Shaw's "Pygmalion" to discern the pedi- 
gree of Joseph Patrick Tumulty: it is 
stamped, not only on his name, but all over 
him. The ''broth of a boy," blond in type, 
round-faced, emotional-eyed, chubby-framed, 
ready of retort, could have sprung originally 
from only one soil, no matter how many gen- 
erations of transplanted stock may have in- 
tervened between the parent root and the 
latest scion. His quickness of utterance has 
no hint of sloppiness in it. He knows how 
to hold his tongue in as many different lan- 
guages as Elihu Burritt could speak, and 
when he expresses himself it is with no un- 
certainty of meaning. His memory, not only 
of names and faces, but of petty personal 
details, is a standing wonder to the party 
time-servers who, having worked with every 
anti-Wilson clique till starved into surrender, 
try to bury the past under a heap of mort- 
gages on the future. Tumulty has a fund of 
reminiscence on which to draw when these 
—29— 



National Miniatures 



late-comers grow importunate, and most of 
them are forced, like the ruler who lacked one 
thing, to go away sorrowful. 

When we recall that in early life Lincoln 
split rails, Johnson was a tailor, Grant 
tanned hides, Garfield drove a team on the 
canal, and Cleveland wrapped parcels in a 
country store, a reflected interest attaches to 
the youthful ambition of Tumulty to be a 
carpenter. Indeed, it appears to have been 
this taste which brought him into close com- 
panionship with a rosy-cheeked little school- 
mate who was the daughter of a practical 
builder, and who now shares his responsibil- 
ity for a family of six frisky young Tumultys. 
After seeing his domestic background it is 
easier to understand the Secretary's adroitness 
in getting rid of the over-strenuous, the per- 
sistently inquisitive, and the broadly discur- 
sive visitors at the White House, without 
making himself a pitiful victim, or losing his 
patience, or giving needless ofifence. The 
President would scarcely know which way to 
turn if he were taken suddenly out of Tu- 
multy's keeping and any one less resourceful 
were to attempt to order his days for him. 



Joseph P. Tumulty 



It is Tumulty who says who shall see him, 
on what business, and when; who keeps an 
eye on the clock, and manages to have a special 
errand in the private office as soon as the 
minute has arrived for cutting off an inter- 
view, and who generally regulates the ma- 
terial side of the miniature world in which he 
lives. Though he does not assume to manage 
the President's tremendous task, he makes it 
possible for the President himself to manage 
it without prematurely wearing out both mind 
and body. 

Washington, May 6, IQ15. 



—31- 



WILLIAM J. BRYAN 

WHAT has become of the Bryan of 
the nineties? Where is the im- 
petuous youth who closed a speech 
in Congress by offering himself, with arms 
outstretched, as a sacrifice for the salvation of 
the people from the Moloch of protective 
greed? Where is the Convention delegate 
from Nebraska who insisted on committing 
the United States to the free and unlimited 
coinage of silver "without waiting for the aid 
or consent of any other nation" ? Where is the 
tourist returning from his first trip abroad so 
full of the desire for Government ownership 
of railways that he could hardly wait for his 
ship to touch port before flooding the country 
with his views? 

Is it another Bryan who fills the Premier's 
seat in the present Cabinet, or is it the same 
Bryan with a new set of ideals and aspira- 
tions? The Bryan we know now, certainly, 
is enjoying life too well, and has too much at 
—32— 



William J. Bryan 



stake in the material world, to be offering 
himself for sacrifice — except from an enter- 
tainment stage to which the performers bring 
their wares for exhibition only. He has ac- 
quired enough respect for other nations to 
try to turn away their wrath with soft an- 
swers, or tide over a disagreeable diplomatic 
situation by assuring the press that it "raises 
some serious questions, on which he is not 
prepared to speak without further mature 
consideration." And he is the leading figure 
in the Administration of a President who is 
so imprudently frank as to plead for justice 
to the carrying corporations, lest persistence 
in an oppressive policy force the country into 
state socialism. If the Bryan of the twentieth 
century be the same Bryan from whom we 
heard periodically in the nineteenth, pray 
what is he doing in this galley? 

It is the same Bryan, but sobered. On his 
countenance the passing years have left their 
impress in an accentuation of its most notable 
features. The nose is larger, but less ag- 
gressive; the brows are more like shaggy 
awnings for eyes which have lost much of 
their twinkle; the chin has grown heavy; the 
—33— 



National Miniatures 



lips are still thin and cut straight across the 
face, but the perpetual light-hearted smile 
has given place to one more mechanical, 
which deepens the vertical creases bounding 
the jaw. Bryan has passed through a good 
deal since his period of immature enthusi- 
asms. He knows now what it is to carry on 
his own shoulders some of the responsibilities 
he used to be so eager to heap upon others. 
He has learned that it is one thing to formu- 
late startling novelties in statecraft which 
others may adopt at their risk, and quite an- 
other to declare himself with equal freedom 
when there is imminent danger that somebody 
may take him up and demand an unqualified 
fulfilment of the challenge. 

Where Bryan made his initial mistake in 
life was in choosing a political rather than a 
theatrical career. As a melodramatic star 
he might have made a brilliant success. A 
lithe and enduring body, a face capable of a 
wide variety of expression, a clear, flexible, 
unwearying voice, a natural gift for gesture, 
a buoyant temperament and a responsive 
manner, made an equipment worth a fortune 
to any actor of sharply individualized parts. 

—34— 



William J. Bryan 



It is in team-work that he shows his weak- 
ness. He would have failed as a stock actor 
for the same reason that he is a failure as a 
member of the Cabinet. It is of the essence 
of good executive faculty to be able to work 
effectively in partnership with others. With 
Bryan, real cooperation is impossible, except 
in the sense that the candle cooperates with 
the candlestick: the candle would give just 
as much light if mounted on a nail as in a 
setting of polished brass or adorned with 
crystal pendants. 

It seems a wasteful scheme to seat such a 
man next the head of the council-table, and 
station at his elbow, or behind the arras, 
experts like Moore and Lansing to do the 
work laid out for him, while he confines him- 
self to the ornamentals. To the politically 
unsophisticated, it looks as if the President 
were discrediting his former hope of "knock- 
ing Bryan into a cocked hat"; to the student 
of party history, however, it is plain that 
Woodrow Wilson has gone one step further 
than Jackson with Van Buren, or Lincoln 
with Chase. Bryan, the chronic agitator, has 
been put into the one position where his ex- 
—35— 



National Miniatures 



posure to the concentrated gaze of the people 
will insure their judgment of him strictly on 
his merits, with results which are not difficult 
to forecast. 

Washington, March i8, igi^. 



-36- 



PRESIDENTS AND PREMIERS 

WE have heard so much, during the 
international complications of the 
last few months, about what would 
have happened if Taft or Roosevelt had been 
elected President in 191 2, that it may be of 
interest to look back at recent Administrations 
which have had threats of war dinned in their 
ears, and see how they reacted. We need re- 
vert no further than to Benjamin Harrison's 
term, when some of the seamen from the U. S. 
S. Baltimore were maltreated by a mob in the 
streets of Valparaiso, and the Government of 
Chili was called upon for reparation. Chili 
had, just then, enough troubles of her own 
to excuse, in her opinion, a little delay, even 
if no account were taken of the local mahana 
habit. Harrison, however, was a man of pep- 
pery temper; he was also painfully conscious 
that his Administration was far from popular 
at home. To embarrass the situation yet more, 
he had for his Secretary of State Mr. Blaine, 
—37-- 



National Miniatures 



of whom the Chilians, justly or unjustly, had 
grown suspicious, and betw^een whom and the 
President had sprung up a perceptible cool- 
ness, due originally to essential differences of 
temperament and increased by the activity of 
sundry political mischief-makers. Then came 
a dramatic climax. 

The President, weary of fruitless negotia- 
tion with Chili, allowed a hint to escape from 
the White House that he should cut short 
her dilly-dallying by a given day. On the 
morning stated, nothing satisfactory having 
eventuated, the press was duly warned that 
an important special message would be read 
in Congress at noon. It was: a message 
which sounded so jingoistic a note as to 
startle the country. But that night the fur- 
ther news leaked out that Mr. Blaine had 
had at his Department, at the very hour the 
President's message was leaving the White 
House for the Capitol, an official dispatch 
from Chili announcing the willingness of her 
Government to meet ours on a friendly foot- 
ing for an adjustment of differences. Of 
course, the whole matter soon reached a peace- 
ful conclusion; but the rift between the Presi- 
—38- 



P?'esidents and Premiers 



dent and his Premier widened thenceforth till 
it became an absolute breach. Blaine's 
sponsors always contended that the reason the 
news of Chili's pacific attitude was not dis- 
closed in time to prevent the sending of the 
message to Congress was that the dispatch 
was in a cipher which took long to translate, 
and that Harrison, meanwhile, was in a hurry 
to head off anything which might rob him of 
his laurels as a theatrical champion of 
American rights. Harrison's defenders re- 
torted that Blaine had deliberately held back 
the amicable dispatch, being eager to see 
Harrison exhibit himself in a ridiculous light 
before the country. 

When Cleveland was faced with a possi- 
bility of war, in consequence of his message 
to Congress calling attention to British ag- 
gressions in Venezuela, he had for Secretary 
of State Richard Olney, a lawyer and student 
of world-politics who ranked in the Demo- 
cratic party of that era about as Elihu Root 
ranks in the Republican party today. Olney 
was not only an eminently capable adviser, 
but truly loyal to his chief, whether agreeing 
with him in all particulars or not. That 
—39— 



National Miniatures 



cloud was dissipated by the good statesman- 
ship then in control in England, and the rights 
of Venezuela were ascertained and conserved 
by a course of moderation reflecting the high- 
est credit upon all parties to it. 

The position of President McKinley, when 
he had a like problem to deal with, differed 
from that of either of his immediate pred- 
ecessors. The Cuban rebellion had reached, 
as has the current strife in Mexico, the pro- 
portions of an international nuisance. It 
had, however, the marked difference that, in- 
stead of being largely a squabble among a 
few factionists ambitious of power and wealth, 
it was the effort of a subject people in Amer- 
ica to free themselves from a European des- 
potism. This idea stirred up a pugnacious 
element among our citizens, especially in the 
West, till they forced the President's hand. 
McKinley, who was a man of peace, found 
himself plunged into a war he had striven 
hard to avert, and with a Secretary of State 
at his elbow whom he had placed there, as 
President Harrison is known to have placed 
Blaine and as President Wilson is assumed 
to have placed Bryan, as a concession to tem- 
—40— 



Presidents and Premiers 



porary political expediency. Poor John 
Sherman had been, in his day, a power to be 
reckoned with — a lawyer of note, a financier, 
a party leader of nearly the dimensions of 
a statesman; but the burden of years had 
brought on a dotage in which feebleness of 
body was combined with a shattered memory 
and a loss of the faculty of concentration. 
Fortunately, before the last stages of nego- 
tiation with Spain had passed, the old gentle- 
man came to realize his inadequacy for the 
work which was falling to his lot, and retired 
to private life, never again to emerge. 

Certain experiences Mr. Wilson has passed 
through during the twenty-eight months he 
has filled the executive chair can be guessed 
only from the phenomena which, in spite of 
his reticence and his desire to avert gossip, 
have reached the people's eyes and ears. 
With a Secretary of State whose one real forte 
was emotional oratory, who was neither a 
lawyer nor a diplomatist, and who had al- 
ready, before the culmination of the Lusitania 
episode, made himself the chief target in 
Washington for tolerant raillery from all over 
the country, the President was evidently pre- 
—41— 



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paring to make the best of a thoroughly un- 
comfortable situation, when relief came in an 
unexpected form. It remains now to be seen 
whether Bryan will follow the prudent after- 
course of Sherman or the suicidal aftercourse 
of Blaine. 

Washington, July 8, 1915. 



-42— 



WILLIAM G. MCADOO 

WITH its long nose and protruding 
chin, its thin lips, and its deep-set 
eyes under refractory bushes of 
brows, the lean, beardless face of William 
Gibbs McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, 
has something haunting about it. One is 
vaguely conscious of having met it somewhere 
before, and in a foreign environment. As 
the association takes greater definiteness, its 
background is seen to be the period of the 
French Revolution. The suggestion becomes 
stronger as Mr. McAdoo's spare, close-knit 
figure stands forth at its full height of more 
than six feet. A little imagination will clothe 
him in a high-waisted and long-tailed coat 
and clinging breeches, wind a fourfold 
kerchief about his neck, and add enough 
length to his hair to translate him from the 
beginning of the twentieth century to the close 
of the eighteenth; and there we have the 
—43— 



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emigre of 1789, as we find him in pictures or 
on the stage. 

Whatever may be said of his features in- 
dividually, they combine to produce a shrewd 
and calculating expression of countenance. 
Some old friends speak of the Secretary as 
genial, and on occasion he does bend to mirth. 
But his is not the sort of merriment that 
irradiates the whole face; it plays about the 
mouth without spreading to the eyes. The 
remark is common among those who come 
into hostile contact with him that he never 
flushes when angry. He is equipped with a 
denunciatory armament before which few 
men are willing to stand up; but when he has 
harsh terms to use to a man's face, they seem 
to come, like his smiles, from his lips, rather 
than from any well of emotion inside him. 

Possibly these idiosyncrasies will explain or 
be explained by his remarkable career. A 
Southern boy, whose family's fortunes were 
ruined by the Civil War and w^ho therefore 
had to build up his own for himself, he did 
so by binding New Jersey to New York with 
a tunnel under the Hudson River. The 
achievement of such a feat must have re- 
—44— 



William G. McAdoo 



quired something in his composition more 
solid than jollity of soul or suavity of man- 
ner. His mode of attacking this enterprise 
was thoroughly characteristic. Wasting no 
time in footless preliminaries, he went straight 
after the one thing needful. For many years 
practical engineers had recognized the im- 
portance of a tunnel, but shaken their heads, 
or fallen to wrangling, over every downright 
proposal to bore one. Young McAdoo was 
not an engineer. He was not dismayed by 
the difficulties to be overcome as he might 
have been if he had known more about the de- 
tails of the task he was setting himself. What 
he did know was that there were a multitude 
of engineers and a myriad of labourers who 
would be glad of a chance to bore that tunnel 
if they were to be paid for it, and that the 
great problem, after all, was to procure the 
money to hire their services. As a lawyer he 
had cultivated the art of "putting things" 
forcibly. This he brought into play with 
much effect, by showing what advantages 
would accrue to all business as soon as the 
tunnel should once be an accomplished fact; 
and when he undertook to win over a reluctant 
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financier he did not let go of his victim till the 
latter was not only convinced, but eager to 
begin the flotation of the project. 

To carry to success, while still young and 
unknown, what had frightened so many 
prominent men into quiescence, required a 
dominant personality and left slight scope for 
the development of the softer graces; and a 
realization of this is doubtless what inspires 
so general faith in the stories of the fierce- 
ness of the Secretary's onslaught upon the 
little group of Washington bankers who re- 
cently have roused his ire. It has also given, 
justly or unjustly, the colour of threats to utter- 
ances of his which he may endeavour to ex- 
plain as mere prophecy. 

The contrast between Mr. McAdoo's official 
habits and those of his later predecessors at 
the head of the Treasury is vivid indeed. 
Mr. McAdoo has, under normal conditions, 
the air of a born executive. If you have a 
legitimate errand you encounter no particular 
difficulty in making your way into his pres- 
ence, but, once there, you are expected to 
dispatch your business and make room for 
some one else: a rule which enables him to 
-46- 



William G. McAdoo 



hold communication with a hundred persons 
in the time that Secretary MacVeagh, by an 
unmethodical manner of dealing with visitors, 
would dissipate on a half-dozen. Mr. Mac- 
Veagh was one of the hardest of men to 
reach. In the conversation which followed, 
his manner was direct enough — not always 
pleasantly so — but he talked too much. Mr. 
Cortelyou's fault was at the other extreme; 
he was reticent, and somewhat timid as to in- 
itiative, probably an inheritance from the 
long clerical service which preceded his pro- 
motion to commanding rank. Mr. Shaw was 
a curious mixture of brashness and caution, 
with a love of mystery when he had plans of 
his own devising to work out, and a taste 
for keeping his critics "guessing." Mr. Gage 
was a pleasant and fairly responsive listener, 
courteous to a degree when visitors unwit- 
tingly tried his patience, quick to flash back 
his indignation when his hospitality was de- 
liberately abused. He knew a long while in 
advance just what he was going to do next 
and just why he was going to do it, but he 
exercised his own discretion as to whom he 
should not take into his confidence about it. 
—47— 



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Any person having frequent business with the 
Treasury Department has had to run pretty 
nearly the whole gamut of human nature in 
dealing with this succession of Secretaries, 
but the sharpest and hardest note in the scale 
is McAdoo's. 

Washington, April 2g, 1915. 



-48— 



NEWTON D. BAKER 

A FEW years ago I was requested to join 
in promoting a movement for the 
restoration of the three-cent piece 
to our national coinage. As it seemed to 
me that the system was already sufficiently 
diversified to meet all actual needs, and 
bearing in mind the dismal fate of the two- 
cent piece, I declined. The prime engi- 
neer of the enterprise was a young man 
named Newton Diehl Baker, who was de- 
scribed to me as the "Three-Cent Mayor" of 
Cleveland, Ohio. He had taken up — and, 
more to the point, had carried through — the 
campaign of his immediate predecessor in of- 
fice, Tom L. Johnson, for three-cent fares on 
the local street railways, and was then, I be- 
lieve, pushing his further plan of placing the 
city lighting system upon a three-cent-per- 
kilowatt-hour basis. He had even invaded 
the popular amusement field, to provide 
municipal dance-houses in which the young 
people of the city could, under reputable 
—49— 



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auspices, glide through the giddy mazes a 
whole evening for three cents a head. 

The next thing I heard of him was when, 
at Baltimore in 191 2, he persuaded the Demo- 
cratic National Convention to trample upon 
the traditional sanctity of the unit rule, and 
recognize the right of the Wilson men in the 
Ohio delegation to ignore their instructions 
and vote their preference, thus throwing to 
Wilson twenty-one out of Ohio's forty-eight 
votes, which but for him would have been 
cast solidly for Harmon. Soon after Wilson's 
victory at the polls the following autumn, it 
became common knowledge in Washington 
that Baker had received an ofifer of a Cabinet 
portfolio, but declined it, not because his sym- 
pathetic interest in the coming administration 
had waned, but because he felt that his first 
duty was to his home city, which he was 
straining every nerve to modernize according 
to a program he had thought out. With 
his final retirement from its service as Mayor, 
however. President Wilson pounced upon him 
again, and this time succeeded in drawing 
him into the executive household as Secretary 
of War. 

—50— 



Newton D. Baker 



This seemed, at a first glance, like the wild- 
est of incongruities, for Baker was known 
everywhere as a pacifist, and what was to 
be expected of a devotee of peace in an office 
which dealt wholly with military concerns 
and exploited war even in its title? He soon 
showed, by publicly distinguishing between a 
war of aggression and a war of defence. For 
the latter, he was in favour of a force of a 
million troops — half of these to be composed 
of the regular army and its militia reserve, 
the other half of citizens who had received 
a specified training in arms. He believed in 
preparedness, he said, because in these days 
no nation could depend, in a vital emergency, 
on a body of embattled farmers equipped with 
the rude firearms which were adequate a few 
decades ago; and to this end he insisted that 
we must mobilize all our resources, including 
our industries and commerce. For instance, 
he added, "I have no doubt that every manu- 
facturing plant in this country could be so 
related to a central bureau of the Government 
that its special usefulness in time of need 
would be known in advance, its wheels ready 
to turn in response to the demand of a public 
—51— 



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crisis, and its proprietors willing to forego 
any speculative profits while they made their 
contribution, in common with the rest of the 
people, toward the preservation of the na- 
tion." 

If you wish to hear these views expanded 
and expounded from his own lips, you must 
prepare for a surprise to the eyes. This phi- 
losopher is no bearded ancient, but to all 
appearance, until you have studied his lines 
carefully, a recent high-school graduate. The 
only thing in the bodily outfit of Baker which 
is at all consistent with his maturity of 
thought and largeness of expression is his 
head, which is so big in proportion to his in- 
significant frame as to suggest topheaviness. 
The brow is prominent, especially at the 
temples. The eyes are hazel-brown in colour, 
and reflective rather than forceful. The 
mouth, which is large and absolutely hori- 
zontal, seems well adapted to hold the sea- 
soned pipe he likes to carry in it. The hair 
is dark, straight, and of good quantity — about 
what usually goes with so sallow a com- 
plexion. In his favourite attitude of attention 
to a visitor, leaning back in his chair with 
—52— 



Newton D, Baker 



one leg drawn up under him and the other 
foot not reaching the floor, he may strike you 
as uncanny until he begins to speak. Then 
you can think of nothing but a firing squad 
condensed into one man: his words rattle out 
into space with such rapidity that, unless your 
hearing is good and your reasoning faculties 
are active, you are hardly able to keep up 
with them. If you do, you will be impressed 
with the comprehensiveness of his vocabu- 
lary. He is never at a loss for a word, and, 
when it comes, it conveys the precise shade 
of meaning he evidently wished it to. Almost 
his only gesture is a raised forefinger. 

During the recent campaign, by the by. 
Baker suffered not a little from his alarming 
facility of utterance; for, according to his 
story, the blunder of a slow stenographer, by 
turning "sold" into "stole," made him appear, 
in a political speech, to portray the patriot 
army of the American Revolution as a mere 
horde of irresponsible vagabonds. This was 
a sad accident for him, as it brought down 
upon him the reprobation of a good many 
excellent people who will never take the 
trouble to look into the whole story. Most 
—S3— 



National Miniatures 



other accidents which have beset Baker's ca- 
reer have had fortunate results. It was acci- 
dent that sent him, a West Virginia country 
boy, to Johns Hopkins University just at the 
time when Woodrow Wilson was delivering 
there a course of lectures on political history 
and economics, the young student's favourite 
topic; and accident again threw him for a 
considerable period into the sarrie boarding- 
house, and assigned him a seat at the same 
table, with the lecturer. It was the accident 
of his small stature and lack of robustness 
which separated him from the common 
juvenile sports and led him to seek an outlet 
for his energies through scholarship and the 
cultivation of his elocutionary powers. It was 
the accident of being needed in Washington 
as secretary to Postmaster-General Wilson 
which gave him his first intimate glimpse, and 
from the inside, of the great governmental 
machine. It was accident that led him to 
overhear, and plunge into, a wrangle between 
two strangers, and thus captivate the fancy of 
one of them, Martin Foran, a leading lawyer 
of Cleveland, who astonished him by taking 
him at once into partnership. And it was his 
—54— 



Newton D. Baker 



removal to Cleveland that brought him into 
the wake of that intellectual prize-fighter, 
Johnson, whose influence shaped his entire life 
thereafter. 

Baker is so unlike anything we have been 
accustomed to regard as Cabinet material that 
it is hard to estimate justly his human quality 
or public value. None of the ordinary stand- 
ards of measurement seem to fit him. A 
radical renovator of corporations, who never- 
theless aims to remember that unoffending 
stockholders have rights and equities like 
other persons, is a curiosity; a publicist who 
condemns militarism, yet is ready to accept 
the expert judgment of professional fighters 
as to the extent of the armament with which 
the nation should provide itself, is equally un- 
common ; a citizen who accepts a great office 
at a critical juncture with the distinct stipula- 
tion that he shall be allowed to lay it down 
again after a year's service, is a political 
eccentric. For the present, we must be con- 
tent to regard Baker as a puzzle, particularly 
as it is always open to doubt whether a man 
who thinks so rapidly and speaks so torren- 
tially as he is as safe as one with more deliber- 

—ss— 



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ate mentality and tongue; but doubtless, in 
this era of incessant change, we shall not have 
to wait very long for the crucial test needed 
to assure us whereabout he belongs on the 
scale of statesmanship. 

Washington, December j, igi6. 



S^- 



JOSEPHUS DANIELS 

IT must put some old-fashioned prophets to 
the blush that, within fifty years of the 
close of the great rebellion, a native of one 
of the Confederate States should be sitting in 
the White House, with a Cabinet made up 
one-half of men of like origin — an extraordi- 
nary proportion, when we note that two more 
members are of alien birth. Of the South- 
erners, the most typical is Josephus Daniels 
of North Carolina. There would be no more 
possibility of mistaking his source, geographi- 
cally speaking, than of mistaking the Presi- 
dent himself for a Wall Street stockbroker. 
But liking for the amiable qualities of the 
typical Southerner — his generosity, his un- 
worldliness, his hospitality, his chivalry — can 
hardly blind us to the fact that his horizon 
is not broad. He seldom gets far enough 
away from the individual objects in the fore- 
ground to obtain a general perspective view 
of any public question. Bearing this in mind, 
—57— 



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it is easier to be patient with certain idio- 
syncrasies of Daniels which have drawn upon 
him almost frenzied censure. 

One such is the campaign for the demo- 
cratizing of the navy. He comes upon what 
seems to him a case of injustice suffered by 
a naval seaman at the hands of an officer 
whose right to command is due to oppor- 
tunities enjoyed at the outset of life rather 
than to superior natural capacity or character. 
His first reaction takes the form of removing 
as many as possible of the artificial barriers 
between the two men, and, to make his senti- 
ment the more manifest, he expresses it in 
terms which the officer is likely to resent and 
the seaman to misinterpret, to the damage of 
good discipline in the service. 

The purpose behind the Secretary's inter- 
ference is sound enough; the fault lies not 
with it, but with the guise in which he pre- 
sents it to the world. It is doubtful whether 
it carries at its core any appreciable taint 
of demagogism. The Secretary is so genu- 
inely a good fellow that he fails to reflect 
that in the very nature of things, where one 
man is, for the public welfare, entrusted with 
—58— 



Josephus Daniels 



the power of life and death over many and 
hence is entitled to their unhesitating obedi- 
ence, it is out of the question to sweep away 
the conventional distinctions between the 
upper and the lower ranks; their absence 
would imply an independence of judgment 
which, under certain exigent conditions, 
might prove fatal. The efficiency of the sub- 
ordinate depends upon his making himself 
as nearly as practicable an intelligent au- 
tomaton, responding instantaneously to every 
movement of the lever under the superior's 
master hand; and that is out of all accord 
with the notion of equality for the time be- 
ing. The well-trained subordinate recognizes 
the true relation instinctively. Daniels re- 
cognizes it, but he is more cub-like than 
statesmanlike in his fashion of promulgating 
its philosophy. 

With his round, expansive, smooth-shaven 
face, his eyes that attest their owner's gift for 
language, his boyish optimism of expression 
and manner, and his indifference to surface 
dignity, Daniels might be taken anywhere for 
a not too mature reporter. You look almost 
instinctively for the pencil and notebook in 
—59— 



XiJtionciJ Miuiatiircs 



his hand while he is talking to you. When 
you learn that he is not a victim, but an earnest 
pursuer, of publicity, you are not surprised; 
and his frequent iteration of the first personal 
pronoun, usually in connection with a humor- 
ous illustrative anecdote, is thus explained. 
You cannot be with Daniels long without be- 
ing reminded of Tom Corwin's vain regrets 
over having spoiled a promising career by 
letting people know how funny he could be. 

The same critics who are so fiercely hound- 
ing Daniels on the score of his desire to demo- 
cratize the navy are wont to contrast him in- 
vidiously with his colleague, the Secretary of 
War: yet Mr. Garrison's desire to encourage 
human relations between the ot^cers and en- 
listed men under him is as sincere as that of 
Mr. Daniels. The main difference lies in his 
carrying his propaganda a stage further back. 
His address to the West Point cadets at the 
first graduating exercises he attended was 
saturated with this thought, that for every 
obligation of the men to their officers there 
was a compensating obligation of the officers 
to the men. He urgently reminded the 
youths before him that the soldiers they were 



Joiephus Daniels 



soon to command were moulded of the same 
clay with themselves, and dcstrvtd corre- 
sponding consideration. Nobody took him 
to task for an incendiar}' utterance, probably 
because the cadets were boys whose characters 
and concepts were still in the formative pro- 
cess; his remarks to them were part of their 
theoretical rather than their practical educa- 
tion, and there were no enlisted men yet under 
them to be influenced to iasubordi nation- 
He was simply starting them right instead 
of waiting till their habits of mind and con- 
duct had become fixed. 

It has been a standing wonder with those 
of us old-timers who remember Daniels as 
a clerk in the Interior Department during 
President Cleveland's second term, how Presi- 
dent Wilson came to pick him out for such 
a Department as the Xaxy. with ten Cabinet 
places to choose from, even admitting that he 
had reached Cabinet size. It now remains 
to see how long he will hold his place under 
the fire that is pouring into him. He is not 
assailed with vague hints of misconduct, like 
Alger; he has not become enfeebled with old 
age, like Sherman; he is not a rival of his 



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chief's for the next Presidential nomination, 
like Blaine. The worst his foes find to say 
of him is that he is — well, just Josephus 
Daniels. 

Washington, April 22, 1Q13, 



-62— 



FRANKLIN K. LANE 

MANY newspaper readers must have 
been struck by the practical una- 
nimity with which the Washington 
correspondents threw out the suggestion, when 
Justice Lamar became incapacitated, that 
Franklin Knight Lane would succeed him, 
and inferred that the forecast had been of- 
ficially inspired. This was a mistake. The 
real reason for such mention of Lane is that 
he has the mind and temperament which, in 
a Federal officer exercising judicial or semi- 
judicial functions, commands the unqualified 
admiration of the news-writers at the capital. 
Taft had it in his earlier days; so had George 
A. Jenks and Henry M. Hoyt. Any of 
these men was ready, when called upon to 
explain one of those legal questions which 
throw the wits of the ordinary layman into 
a hopeless tangle, to sit down quietly with the 
inquirer and straighten out the whole matter 

-63- 



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in a few sentences free from technical ver- 
biage. 

It is his quality of patience which is never 
on parade, his rare art of expounding great 
problems so as to show that they are really 
only little problems magnified, and his sym- 
pathy with the writer who will take the pains 
to seek accurate knowledge of a subject before 
spreading it upon the printed page, that have 
made Lane pre-eminently the newspaper can- 
didate for the Supreme bench. But there are 
others besides newspaper workers who long 
ago fixed upon Lane as a coming man for the 
court. Their idea of his fitness is founded on 
his possession of faculties quite removed from 
those of expression. One is his calmness 
under conditions which throw many men of 
a different type out of balance. As a Cali- 
fornian, for instance, he objected not less 
sincerely than Hiram Johnson to a railway 
despotism in his State, but he did not find it 
necessary to become a chronic ranter and 
roarer in making plain his discontent, or to 
condemn to eternal obloquy every one who did 
not take kindly to his special conception of a 
remedy. He did not vaunt his intention to 
-64- 



Franklin K. Lane 



"kick the Southern Pacific out of California 
politics," but he did the most effective job of 
its sort ever accomplished when, by a series of 
interrogatories so skilfully thought out and 
so courteously couched that the witness could 
neither resist nor resent them, he drew the 
whole story of Harriman's monopolistic 
schemes from the lips of Harriman himself, 
and thus supplied the Government with the 
information it needed for checking these by 
regular process of law. 

It is this way of going straight at any point 
he wishes to compass, instead of wasting time 
and thought on publicity antics, that has dis- 
tinguished his policy with regard to the In- 
dians. Its basic theory is not new. As long 
ago as 1895 Hoke Smith recognized the fact 
that most of the aboriginal tribes, if not all, 
contained members so far in advance of the 
great body in intelligence, adaptability, and 
disposition to improve, that it was highly un- 
wise to keep them tied down to the common 
code of restrictions as regarded property and 
social freedom. He therefore proposed a 
series of censuses to sift out those Indians 
everywhere who were capable of caring for 
-6s— 



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their own interests, and, from among these 
again, the lesser number who were fit for full 
citizenship. He did not remain at the head 
of his Department long enough to carry out 
this campaign; but Secretary Lane, without 
making quite the same distinction between 
property rights and citizenship, has taken up 
the general idea and sent into the field a 
force of census-takers who are to separate the 
capable from the incapable Indians on the 
lines evolved in the administration of the 
Burke law. The Lane plan includes also a 
feature which might, owing to the cruder 
conditions then prevailing in the frontier 
country, have proved impracticable in Mr. 
Smith's time ; he proposes that when an Indian 
is found clearly competent to take care of him- 
self, he receive what is due him, and be set 
upon his own feet and cut loose from the 
Government, whether he wishes to be or not. 
Here is the practical conclusion immediately 
pursuant of the practical investigation: the 
vital facts once ascertained, their logical conse- 
quences to be immediately enforced. More- 
over, beginning the line of inquiry at the right 
end, the Lane plan assumes that, but for sun- 
—66— 



Franklin K. Lane 



dry abnormal circumstances which have now 
passed away, the Indian would have been as 
free today in every respect as any other 
American, and asks, not whether a given In- 
dian can safely be discharged from wardship, 
but on what pretext the Government is still 
compelled, for either his welfare or its own, 
to bear longer the unnecessary burden of his 
guardianship. 

A like directness characterizes Secretary 
Lane's leap from yesterday into today in his 
mode of dealing with new emergencies. His 
advocacy of a Government-owned railway in 
Alaska was widely regarded, when it was first 
made known, as a dangerous stride towards 
state socialism. But when he recalled the 
fact that our old way of connecting an un- 
developed territory with the Union and the 
outside world was to run wagon-roads into 
it, and that the railway is only the modern 
successor of the wagon-road, many who came 
to criticize remained to reflect. 

Physically, the Secretary is an impressive 
rather than a dominating figure. Solidly 
built, enough inclined to corpulency to sug- 
gest good-fellowship, with a large, round, 

-67- 



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genial face, a high brow, and prematurely 
white hair, eyes that combine earnestness with 
humour, a habit of talking straight to you in- 
stead of at you but over your shoulder to some 
one else, a mouth and jaw that leave no doubt 
of the force latent behind the friendly man- 
ner: here you have your picture of the man 
whom, though a Democrat, President Roose- 
velt placed upon the Interstate Commerce 
Commission in spite of a Republican Senate's 
threatened refusal to confirm, and who has 
made good under three Administrations and 
with two sets of duties. Are the qualities 
which he has displayed in the executive field 
the sort which are needed on the bench just 
now? 

Washington, January 20, igiO. 



—68— 



CHIEF JUSTICE WHITE 

THE recent decision of the Supreme 
Court, by a divided vote, upholding 
the constitutionality of the Adamson 
Hwj does not, of course, settle the matter 
finally, as new^ conditions may arise after the 
war crisis is past, justifying a demand for a 
rehearing, as happened in the celebrated legal- 
tender case. For the present, vs^hat has in- 
terested most observers of public affairs quite 
as much as the technical merits of the question 
at issue is the line of cleavage in the court. 
That Holmes and Brandeis and Clarke should 
have been of the majority favourable to the 
law excites no more wonder than that Day 
and Van Devanter and Pitney should have 
been on the other side; but the man whose 
position aroused real curiosity was the Chief 
Justice, Edward Douglass White, who, from 
the beginning of his career as a national per- 
sonage, has been recognized as a business con- 
servative and a strict constructionist where- 

-69- 



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ever the Constitution was concerned, and yet 
who has shown on two or three occasions a 
leaning towards liberality. 

It was as a stickler for "business rights" 
that he was sent to Washington to represent 
Louisiana in the Senate. In that body he 
combated with all his might, and effectively, 
the proposed legislation for abolishing specu- 
lation in "options" and "futures," his opposi- 
tion being based primarily on a broad objec- 
tion to the Government's interfering with 
private traffic, and secondarily on the means 
used to this end — taxing a business out of exist- 
ence, or marking it for destruction on the 
ground that it was an impediment to interstate 
commerce. Such methods he considered mere 
specious disguises of purpose, and hence 
abuses of the powers conferred by the Con- 
stitution upon Congress. Nevertheless, he 
did not criticize, but vigorously advocated, a 
protective tax on imported sugar, and appar- 
ently had no distaste for the payment of 
bounties to domestic producers, though to the 
eye of most of his fellow-Democrats the one 
seemed wholly foreign to the spirit of our in- 
stitutions, and the other as serious a misdirec- 
—70— 



Chief Justice White 



tion of the taxing power as its use to throttle 
an obnoxious trade. As Justice, he stood firm 
against the dissolution of the Northern Securi- 
ties Corporation as "in conflict with the most 
elementary conception of the rights of prop- 
erty," yet voted in the "bake-shop case" to 
sustain the right of a legislature to say how 
many hours a baker may hire himself out to 
work. As Senator he backed up loyally the 
unwillingness of President Cleveland to take 
over Hawaii, and registered a stout protest 
against other schemes looking towards an ex- 
pansion policy; but when the "insular cases" 
came before his court he voted with the ma- 
jority, who held that this nation could possess 
itself of remote territory and govern people 
who were not citizens or eligible to citizen- 
ship. 

Physically, White is of the bulky type: to 
describe him as large is insufficient. He is 
so built that he comes very near rolling as he 
walks; and he persists in wearing, on all ex- 
cept particular occasions, an informal little 
hat that fits the upper story of his head but 
gives the lower story an effect of jowliness. 
His mouth, drooping slightly at the corners, 
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belies his kindly temper and social geniality. 
His once crisp waves of auburn hair have 
turned to brown-grey ripples with the flight 
of time, while the reddish tints of his com- 
plexion stand out more vividly. Gowned and 
seated on the bench, he makes an impressive 
appearance; and his dignity of deportment 
and his fatherly manner of treating young 
and inexperienced pleaders have passed into a 
proverb. His training in the Senate, where 
he became noted for his untheatrical but in- 
cisive style in debate, proves of value in the 
court chamber, where painstaking lucidity of 
statement and distinctness of enunciation have 
not too commonly characterized the delivery 
of oral opinions. 

He made his judicial way upward over a 
variegated path. The chances are that a man 
of so marked quality as a partisan would not 
have been thought of for the Supreme Court 
but for certain unusual circumstances. 
Grover Cleveland, who had received his 
nomination for the Presidency in 1892 in 
spite of the hostility of the Democratic faction 
in his own State headed by Senators Hill and 
Murphy, was antagonized by the twain at 
—72— 



Chief Justice White 



every turn in his Administration. The death 
of Justice Blatchford left New York unrep- 
resented in the court, and to keep the prece- 
dent of nearly a half-century intact the Presi- 
dent named successively William B. Horn- 
blower and Wheeler H. Peckham for the 
vacancy, but both nominations were rejected 
by the Senate at the instigation of Hill and 
Murphy. Mr. Cleveland thereupon took 
pains to make the people of New York see 
that the loss by their State of its accustomed 
honour was due not to his indifference, but to 
the obduracy of the two patronage-mongers 
whom they permitted to misrepresent them 
in the Senate, and forced the lesson home by 
going as far afield as practicable for his next 
choice, naming Senator White of Louisiana. 
This was especially galling to Hill and 
Murphy, because, though White belonged to 
a group of Senators most friendly to the Presi- 
dent, they did not dare oppose confirmation 
in defiance of the unwritten rule of Senatorial 
courtesy which requires immediate approval 
when a member of the upper chamber is 
nominated for an executive or judicial office. 
Louisiana, however, had sent White to Wash- 
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ington quite as much to look out for her 
interests in tariff legislation as for any other 
purpose ; and at the risk of provoking a deal of 
invidious criticism he continued his efforts to 
amend the pending Wilson Tariff bill in be- 
half of the domestic sugar industry even after 
he had accepted the invitation to the bench. 

Other things being equal, it w^as probably 
the fact of his being a citizen of the far South 
that most strongly moved President Taft to 
make him Chief Justice. It had been the al- 
most uniform practice to look outside of the 
membership of the court for its presiding of- 
ficer. Justice Hughes, as one of Taft's own 
appointees to an Associate's seat, was widely 
expected to be his choice if he should seek a 
candidate for promotion within the court; but 
it had long been an aspiration of Taft's to pro- 
voke a breach in the Solid South, and Louisi- 
ana, thanks to the extremity of her geographi- 
cal location, coupled with her willingness now 
and then to send a Republican Representative 
to Congress, seemed an appropriate place to 
begin. 

Washington, May j, igiy. 



—74— 



ASSOCIATE JUSTICE DAY 

JUSTICE WILLIAM R. DAY of the 
Supreme Court came into national no- 
tice about the time that McKinley be- 
gan his campaign for the Presidency. He was 
a neighbour of McKinley's at Canton, Ohio, 
and the two men were on the most intimate 
personal terms. That their friendship was not 
a matter of self-interest on Day's part was evi- 
dent from the fact that he was the better law- 
yer, and that he had had opportunities for ad- 
vancement in the line of his profession which 
he had declined, partly because of his distin- 
clination towards public life and partly be- 
cause his health was never robust. President 
Harrison, for instance, whose discernment and 
good conscience in the selection of material 
for the bench made any ofifer from him exceed- 
ingly flattering, had named Day for United 
States District Judge, and the Senate had con- 
firmed the nomination, but Day even then re- 
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fused to serve, on the ground that the duties 
of the position might overtax his strength. 

Besides his competency as a lawyer and 
his sound common-sense and mental balance 
as a man, Day's most striking characteristic 
has always been his directness. Nobody de- 
spises more than he the meaningless frills and 
furbelows of human intercourse. As tender- 
hearted as McKinley, and as earnest in his 
desire to avoid wounding the feelings of any 
one needlessly, he yet believes that frankness 
of approach, coupled with gentleness, is the 
greatest saver of friction in the long run. He 
is so serious in his outward demeanour that 
the prophet of his class at Michigan Univer- 
sity pictured him as running an undertaker's 
establishment and driving the hearse himself; 
but underneath the surface he has always been 
given to fun. On one occasion he was in- 
volved with a number of other students in a 
prank which, though harmless enough of it- 
self, violated some of the most sacred canons 
of academic etiquette, and the faculty resolved 
to find out who were the guilty parties. In- 
stead of taking the boys one by one and ask- 
ing them candidly, "Did you have a hand in 
-76- 



Associate Justice Day 



this?" they set up an inquisition in which, by 
various roundabout methods of questioning, 
they endeavoured to entangle the suspects, 
winding up their work with a long secret con- 
sultation among themselves. Some member 
of the student body — local tradition still at- 
tributes the idea, if not the performance, to 
Day— countered on these tactics by boring a 
hole through a partition of the locked council- 
chamber, and, with his ear to the opening, took 
elaborate notes of all that went on inside. 
The next day a burlesque report of the pro- 
ceedings was published to the college, which 
showed up the whole business in so ridiculous 
a light, but with so substantial faithfulness to 
the facts, that the college went fairly wild 
with mirth and the faculty were glad to re- 
treat without punishing anybody. 

Another typical incident occurred when 
Day came to the final tests which were to 
determine whether he should bear away a 
bachelor's degree. He always had hated the 
higher mathematics and made no secret of 
the distaste. After the engineering examina- 
tion was over, instead of waiting with the rest 
of his class for the formal announcement of 

—77— 



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the results, he sought the professor who had 
the obnoxious subject in charge, and plumped 
the question at him: "Doctor, have I 
passed ?" "Why are you in such haste to ask?" 
inquired the professor. "I want to know, and 
to know at once," responded Day, "because 
I want to get rid of the whole blamed thingl" 
He got his answer on the spot. 

McKinley realized, from the outset of his 
Administration, that he Was to have the Cuban 
problem to settle, with others which could 
hardly fail to come in its train. But he was 
politically bound to put John Sherman at the 
head of the State Department, and this made 
him all the more resolved to have a firm 
friend like Day in the second place, for 
Sherman's mind had begun to fail sadly. It 
was while Day was thus holding the fort that 
the Cuban Junta intercepted a letter written 
by the Spanish Minister, Dupuy De Lome, 
in which the President was treated with a 
discourtesy amounting to insult. The letter 
was turned over to Day. Immemorial prece- 
dent would have demanded that he open a 
formal diplomatic correspondence on the sub- 
ject, a course which would have consumed 
-78- 



Associate Justice Day 



months, probably, before bringing out an 
admission of the authorship of the screed and 
a disavowal of offensive intent on the part of 
the Spanish Government. 

That was not the style of Day, the direct. 
Sending to the Spanish Legation to inquire 
whether it would be agreeable for Senor De 
Lome to receive him, he went thither in per- 
son, and, on the Minister's appearance, 
handed forth the letter with the simple in- 
quiry whether it was genuine. De Lome, 
taken quite aback by this unique mode of 
proceeding, read the letter slowly through 
and then bowed his affirmation. 

"Of course, your Excellency — " suggested 
Day. 

"Oh, certainly, certainly," answered De 
Lome; "I will cable Madrid tonight my re- 
quest to be relieved." 

And the die was cast. In a few hours the 
Minister's passports were in his hands and he 
was on his way out of Washington, never to 
return. 

When Sherman retired, Day became Secre- 
tary in his place, and manifested the same 
disposition to "get things done" by calling 
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John Bassett Moore to be his assistant, re- 
gardless of the circumstance that Moore was 
a Democrat. It is hardly wonderful that 
Day's opinions on the bench are so com- 
mended for the way they go straight to the 
point. 

Washington, February 24, igid. 



—80- 



WILLIAM J. STONE 

IN former emergencies like our contro- 
versy with Germany, one of the first ques- 
tions in every one's mind was as to what 
manner of man the Senate had for chairman of 
its committee on foreign relations. At such a 
time this committee stands in more intimate as- 
sociation with the President than any other, 
even including the military and naval afifairs 
and appropriations committees, its functions 
being of almost equal delicacy with those of 
the Department of State. Upon its chair- 
man devolves largely the duty of planning its 
program of work; and as its spokesman on 
the floor his intelligence, tact, persuasiveness 
and skill in debate count for so much that for 
the moment he becomes to all intents the leader 
of the Senate. These facts and conditions 
lend just now an uncommon interest to 
the personality of William Joel Stone of 
Missouri. 

The stranger who sees Stone for the first 



National Miniatures 



time and knows nothing of his antecedents 
would find it hard to locate him on the map 
of- human activities. Clothe him in solemn 
black, with a white tie and a wide-awake hat, 
and you find him the typical country parson 
of the Southwest. Crown him with nattier 
headgear and exchange the white tie for one 
less definitely ministerial, and you have a 
suggestion of the professor from some rural 
college. In a grey summer business suit and 
a Fedora, he turns into a prosperous village 
or small-town magnate, perhaps the local 
banker, who holds mortgages galore on the 
neighbouring farms and shaves notes artisti- 
cally. The slight stoop in the shoulders, the 
thin, compressed lips, and the long, insinua- 
ting nose, seen in profile, give him the air of 
a man who is perpetually looking for some- 
thing; but if you are curious to know what it 
is, your inquisitiveness is baffled by the eyes, 
which are grey, and as expressionless as those 
of an Egyptian sphinx. They reveal not a 
hint of what is going on in the brain behind 
them. In combination with their drooping 
lids, they give you rather the effect of drowsi- 
ness and indifference; and you are always 
—82— 



William J. Stone 



astonished when, in the midst of a forensic 
battle in which their owner has made no sign 
of special interest, you hear him, in a voice 
nasal in quality, but crisp and incisive as 
befits a cross-examiner, stick a sharp ques- 
tion into a member of the opposition or pass 
an enigmatic comment on something said. 

Stone is a lawyer, and has the reputation 
of being a pretty clever one. Certainly, if 
ability to draw what he wishes from an ad- 
versary but avoid telling anything himself en- 
titles its possessor to rank at the bar. Stone 
belongs among the notables. In Congress he 
employs this faculty with efifect in handling 
witnesses before his committee, but he gains 
his fame for shrewdness at the expense of 
recognition as a leader. The spectacle of 
Stone heading a crusade or directing an ag- 
gressive campaign would hardly fit into the 
imagination of any one familiar with his 
methods. He will always be an interesting 
human riddle, but never the embodiment of 
a positive maxim. 

In nearly all closely contested cases, where 
a count of noses precedes a division in the 
Senate, Stone's is one of those the prophets 
-83- 



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find most difficulty in placing. He appears 
to be weighing the evidence like a judge down 
to the last moment, and such utterances as 
he vouchsafes are liable to more than one 
interpretation. This peculiarity does not ap- 
pear to be due to a deliberate purpose to con- 
ceal the operations of his mind or mystify the 
public, but is as much a part of the man's 
composition as Jones's humour or Smith's 
cynicism: his business is his own — why en- 
courage others to meddle with it? His non- 
advertising habit, conserved in the midst of 
a group of men who are often given to air- 
ing their opinions in advance and trying to 
force conclusions by assuming an attitude of 
domination, has won for him among his 
homely critics the title, ''Gum-Shoe Bill." 
They assert that he accomplishes his ends by 
keeping so quiet that nobody guesses where 
he is or what he is doing until he bobs up 
suddenly in the least suspected quarter and 
makes ofif with the prize. That, they say, is 
the secret of his long prominence in the Demo- 
cratic politics of his State in spite of Folk's 
insurgency. 

What Stone will have to face now, however, 
—84— 



William J. Stone 



are not questions of domestic party tactics, but 
the foreign problems of a great nation. It 
is a fairly safe prediction that, like Bryan on 
the companion ship, he will lapse ere long 
from helmsman to first assistant; for no one 
who has watched him of late can have failed 
to note his recognition of the fact that it is 
the President who commands the fleet, and 
that it is to be handled practically as a unit. 
Another safe prediction is that Stone will not 
be required to put forth so much effort as some 
of his predecessors on the once important 
duty of acting as the defender of the Adminis- 
tration in the Senate: the popular confidence 
Mr. Wilson has succeeded in inspiring, and his 
uncommon gift for setting forth his own case 
in terms within the comprehension of the least 
subtle of minds, will leave few gaps in that 
line, if any, for the Delphic Stone to fill. 
Washington, June 3, 1915. 



-85— 



HENRY CABOT LODGE 

HENRY CABOT LODGE is one 
of the few survivors of the era 
when the Senate stood for some- 
thing more than a mere group of ninety 
odd men prominent in politics. He is fami- 
liar with the great precedents and traditions 
which it accumulated in the course of a cen- 
tury when it aimed to fulfil the function as- 
signed to it by the fathers of the Constitution, 
of reviewing with, cool brain and in placid 
temper the often overheated legislation of the 
House. \Vith Aldrich and Allison, Hale 
and Hoar, Sherman and Spooner, Cushman 
Davis and Orville Piatt, for associates and 
counsellors, he could not fail of efficient sup- 
port in almost any stand he might take for 
sanity of judgment. Today all this goodly 
company are gone, and he must fall back 
upon McCumber and Gallinger, Clapp and 
S'moot, Warren and Clark, Dillingham and 
Nelson, for the nearest approach to veterans 
—86— 



Henry Cabot Lods[e 



of h]S own Class. He is as lonesome-looking, 
in his way, as a tall forest tree which the 
woodsmen have spared while most of its 
neighbours of equal age have gone to the lum- 
ber mill and those of younger growth have 
not yet risen far into the air. 

In the old times, Lodge was the terror of 
moderate-minded citizens because of his radi- 
calism. He was regarded as a jingo of the 
firebrand order; and when President McKin- 
ley died and Roosevelt succeeded to the Presi- 
dency, the atmosphere of Washington was 
fairly a-tremble with appeals sent from vari- 
ous parts of the country to persons of sup- 
posed influence here, to prevent if possible 
the disaster of Lodge's appointment to the 
head of the State Department, on the theory 
that he would have us in the midst of a war 
before he w^as fairly warm in his seat. To 
those who know how impossible it would 
have been to drag him out of the Senate and 
put him into an administrative office, where 
he would play second to some other man, 
this idea has always seemed comic, but beyond 
a doubt it was honestly entertained. Now, 
however, so marked is the change that has 
—87— 



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come over the whole popular outlook and at- 
titude, Lodge seems almost like a reactionary 
among a mass of radicals. His support of 
the President, regardless of their political dif- 
ferences, on the canal tolls issue, on the legal 
points involved in the Austrian controversy, 
in the sharper crisis of the Lusitania incident, 
and in the most recent phase of the U-boat 
matter, is significant of his desire to take rank 
with the statesmen rather than with the mere 
leaders of his party. 

He looks his loneness. Though long past 
the age when men tend to grow stout, his 
figure is that of a youth. His step has spring 
to it, his voice is unbroken. In most men 
we find under such a surface a strain of so- 
ciability, a craving for fellowship, which may 
be attributed in the young to inexperience and 
uncertainty of self, and in the old to a desire to 
cling as long as possible to past associations. 
But Lodge belongs in this particular in neither 
category. He has not the gregarious friend- 
liness and the optimism of the beginner in 
life, or the mellowness of well-preserved age. 
His likings are for specific individuals, not for 
his neighbours at large. His friends are few. 



Henry Cabot Lodge 



and he is slow to make new ones. He stands 
perfectly poised on his two feet, shows a fine 
scorn for criticism, and accepts a word of 
praise as no concession, but his simple due. 
It is because of these traits that the admiration 
he commands is quite unmixed with the de- 
votion which infuses the sentiment of the 
multitude for so many successful public men. 
In spite of the time-honoured custom of Mas- 
sachusetts, of keeping her Senators in their 
places as long as they are notable figures in 
the view of the country, the wonder is wide- 
spread here whether Lodge will fare as well 
under the system of popular election as he did 
while the Legislature had control of the 
matter. 

A man of the Lodge type is bound to have 
a legion of enemies, and Lodge has rather 
more than his share of implacables among the 
very men from whom, on general grounds, he 
would expect support — those of his own social 
caste. They hold him a demagogue, while the 
class to whom demagogues most appeal sneer 
at him as an aristocrat. It was customary 
only a few years ago to hear him denounced, 
in the midst of his own former circle, as a 
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spoilsman. That he had had his share of the 
still unprotected Federal patronage he would 
be the last person to deny; but on the other 
hand he did more than any one man except 
his old friend Roosevelt to defend the merit 
system in the clerical service of the United 
States against the assaults of a vicious horde 
of foes in Congress during the most critical 
period of its history, from 1889 to 1895. It 
required a thorough knowledge of the inner 
machinery of legislation, a quick wit and tire- 
less energy, to handle some of the situations 
with which the reformers were faced at that 
time; and when the very idealists for whose 
cause he was striking valiant blows would 
respond by throwing fresh difficulties into his 
way, he was reminded often of Roosevelt's re- 
mark concerning his own career — that the men 
who gave him most trouble when he was 
trying to do something for the whole people 
were the "good citizens" whom, as a youth, 
he used to see seated about his father's din- 
ner-table. 

The shape and size of Lodge's face, the 
wave or incipient curl of his hair, and the 
rounded trim of his moustache and beard, give 
—90— 



Henry Cabot Lodge 



him an aspect of boyishness at a little distance, 
which disappears as the observer approaches 
him; for then the lines which mark his fea- 
tures, and which have deepened with advanc- 
ing years, become somewhat emphasized, 
and suggest a cynical bent of mind. Even in 
the thick of a brisk debate this suggestion is 
not dissipated. There is nothing infectious 
in his enthusiasms, so prudently are they 
curbed, or in his laugh, which always stays 
where it starts instead of extending through 
his whole frame as if he enjoyed it. But he 
has one virtue, at least, which many a jollier 
man might emulate with advantage: though 
he may cross swords daily with his antagonists 
in debate in the Senate, they have never any 
ground to complain of his discourtesy, and for 
the dignity of the chamber no member who 
ever sat there has shown a more scrupulous 
respect. 

Washington, March 23, igiO. 



—91— 



BOIES PENROSE 

WHOEVER is surprised at the re- 
cent appearance of Boies Penrose 
as a tariff-reformer must be un- 
familiar with the story of his rise and 
progress in American politics. Penrose was 
at Harvard with Roosevelt, and shared the 
latter's notion that the proper place for a 
young patriot of aristocratic antecedents was 
in party leadership. Roosevelt prepared for 
his career by a couple of years at a law 
school; Penrose by reading Blackstone and the 
other standard commentators under the per- 
sonal tutelage of Wayne MacVeagh, equally 
notable as a jurist and a reformer. Mr. Mac- 
Veagh's admirers welcomed his new disciple 
into their circle with enthusiasm. Had he 
not sought the very fountain-head for his in- 
struction and inspiration? And had he not 
come by his aspirations for civic betterment 
through a distinguished ancestry? Was not 
one of his forefathers the close friend of Wil- 
—92— 



Boies Penrose 



liam Penn, was not another associated with 
Jefferson in the acquisition of the Louisiana 
territory, and had not a third made a two- 
term record as Solicitor of the United States 
Treasury? Yes, and there was his father, a 
professor of medicine in the University of 
Pennsylvania and a citizen of public spirit. 
Where was a better line to spring from? 

To the legislature Penrose soon found his 
way, and there fell under the eye of Matthew 
S. Quay, who promptly slated him for a lieu- 
tenancy in the Republican "organization," and 
selected him as a candidate for Mayor of 
Philadelphia. But Quay's touch had ruined 
him for the reforming element of the Quaker 
City, who forgot all about his ancestry and 
everything else that was good, and bent them- 
selves to the advertisement of whatever they 
could learn to his disfavour. They badly 
frightened Quay's man Martin, who had the 
handling of municipal patronage, and at the 
eleventh hour Penrose was dropped and an- 
other candidate named for Mayor. Quay 
swore vengeance after the manner of Presi- 
dent Jackson when the Senate snubbed Van 
Buren's diplomatic ambition. "If they won't 

—93— 



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have him for Mayor," said the Big Boss, "let's 
see how they'll like him for something bet- 
ter!" And with one swing of his powerful 
arm he landed Penrose in the United States 
Senate. There Penrose has stayed ever since, 
entering this year upon his fourth term. 

His service as a Senator has been more 
conspicuous for its length than for its bril- 
liancy. Once in a while some fellow Senator 
has had the temerity to say as much, though 
in severer terms. When one of them has thus 
ventured, the galleries have sat breathless, in 
expectation of seeing Penrose leap to his feet 
and strike back; but that is not his method. 
He remains silent in his seat, betraying no 
emotion, even by a change of countenance, 
while the speaker, goaded to a frenzy by this 
contemptuous attitude, goes on heaping ac- 
cusation upon accusation till he has exhausted 
his stock. After the last word is said, Penrose 
rises, and, in the jargon of the Capitol, "pro- 
ceeds to skin" his critic — not with the double- 
edged wit of a Root or with the prehistoric 
cleaver of a Tillman, but in a fashion all his 
own, quite as personal and strictly to the point. 
Not the least factor in the efifectiveness of his 
—94— 



Boies Penrose 



retort is a peculiarity of pronunciation which 
some observers style a dialect. It is really 
more of an abnormal interplay of tongue, 
teeth, and lips — probably a trick acquired in 
childhood and left uncorrected — but by its 
very oddity it commands a fixedness of atten- 
tion which the same listeners would not vouch- 
safe to the same things said by another 
speaker. 

Penrose is a big fellow, reminding you of 
John L. Sullivan long enough out of training 
to have achieved a girth. His dark hair and 
moustache are too slighty tinged with grey 
to suggest his fifty-five years. With his heavy 
mouth, square jaw, the needlessly sinister ex- 
pression of his face in repose, and the mas- 
sive frame beneath, he impresses you as a 
merciless adversary to reckon with, whether in 
running a convention or directing a division 
of spoils. He made his last campaign for re- 
election against Gififord Pinchot, whom Col. 
Roosevelt had backed to win; but nobody in 
Washington who understood the ingrowing 
politics of Pennsylvania entertained a mo- 
ment's doubt of the result as between the two 
reformers. 

—95— 



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For Penrose is a reformer, too. If you 
don't believe it, ask him. He doesn't shout 
over-loudly for remote benefits like the con- 
servation of natural resources or the improve- 
ment of the foreign service ; but when it comes 
to practical, every-day issues, look at his rec- 
ord! He not only condemns third terms for 
the Presidency, but he wouldn't have even two, 
and the one he concedes he would be willing 
to see reduced to a single year. As to ex- 
travagant expenditures, was not he the man 
who filibustered an appropriation bill out of 
existence because the Cabinet officer who 
would have the money to spend said it w^ould 
be wasteful? Pensions? Why, a bill he 
fathered proposed pensioning not only all the 
soldiers of the Union army in the Civil War, 
but also all non-enlisted persons who were 
under military orders for thirty days during 
that crisis, with their widows, children, and 
dependent parents! He was an outspoken 
champion of the transfer of Senatorial elec- 
tions from the mercenary control of the State 
legislatures to the purer atmosphere of the 
popular poll ; and within a year we have found 
him quoted as favouring State laws for a 
-96- 



Boies Penrose 



graduated inheritance tax, the heavier taxa- 
tion of trusts, the regulation of women's and 
children's employment, strong public utilities 
commissions, and the submission of the ques- 
tion of woman suffrage to the voters. To cap 
all, he has declared it preposterous to allow 
''two or three men, sitting in a secret closet," 
to shape the fate of a political party. What 
more could any one ask? Has he not beaten 
Bill Flinn to a frazzle? 

Washington, August ig, igis. 



—97- 



JACOB H. GALLINGER . 

IF any one in Congress can be said to be "all 
things to all men," it ought to be one 
whose record reveals him as a German by 
ancestry, a Canadian by birth, a printer by 
trade, a physician by profession, a poet by 
courtesy, a militia general by grace of a Gov- 
ernor's commission, a Representative in Con- 
gress, a Senator of twenty-five years' experi- 
ence, and an octogenarian who does not drink 
or smoke or diet. Such a combination is 
Jacob H. Gallinger, senior Senator from New 
Hampshire. After reviewing his antecedents, 
it is not difficult to understand his apparently 
unrelated attitudes towards Mexico on the 
one hand and the belligerents of Europe on 
the other, or his reported uncertainty as to 
the stand taken by Bryan on recent questions. 
Gallinger is today perhaps the most distin- 
guished standpatter among the Republicans 
in Congress, except "Uncle Joe" Cannon. 
He has not Cannon's quickness of wit or his 
-98- 



Jacob H. Galling er 



social gifts, but he makes the most of what 
he has. Since Aldrich and Hale dropped out, 
he has endeavoured in a way to fill the gap 
they left, and would undoubtedly have been 
President pro tempore of the Senate had that 
chamber remained in Republican control. 
His career illustrates how much accident has 
to do with human afifairs. If he had not been 
one of twelve children started in life on a 
Canadian farm which wearied him with its 
loneliness, he might never have aspired to 
push out into the world and thus been ap- 
prenticed to the printer of a country news- 
paper. If an uncle who was a physician had 
not stirred his youthful admiration, he might 
not have saved his wages, removed to Cin- 
cinnati, and worked his way through a medi- 
cal college there by spending most of every 
night at a compositor's case. Had he not, 
during this period, become acquainted with a 
New Hampshire girl who was visiting in the 
West, it might never have occurred to him 
to seek a wife among the New England hills; 
and had she not injured her ankle just as they 
were getting ready to join the tide of emigra- 
tion for the frontier "to grow up with the 
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country," he might not have become a citizen 
of New Hampshire. But for being called 
upon to recite an original poem at some rustic 
festivity, he might never have discovered his 
bent for oratory and thus drifted into politics. 
On his voluntary retirement, after a term or 
two in the House, to resume practice as a 
physician in his New Hampshire home, there 
seemed still a chance for him to break 
through this fortuitous chain of fate; but 
when the local politicians, having grown used 
to hobnobbing with him, flooded his office so 
as to leave him scant time to look after his 
patients, he decided that further resistance 
would be fruitless, and surrendered. 

The spider-like Chandler and the bearded 
Blair constituted then the Senatorial span 
from the Granite State. Blair was nearing 
the end of one term, and so sure of another 
that some of his friends were imprudent 
enough to sneer at Gallinger's ambition to 
succeed him. Here was the accident that de- 
cided the Doctor to plunge in and win at any 
cost. Blair and Chandler united forces to 
obstruct his progress, but in vain. They were 
fighting at the disadvantage of old blood 
— lOO — 



Jacob H. Gallinger 



against new; moreover, Chandler had the 
powerful railway interests arrayed in opposi- 
tion to him, and Blair had a record of some 
length and many eccentricities to defend. 
Gallinger proved too strong for such a com- 
bination, and in 1891 he won the chair which 
he has held ever since. 

Naturally, having a professional prefix to 
his name, Gallinger has always been in de- 
mand to pass judgment on measures affecting 
medical and sanitary regulations; and in spite 
of his continued protests that he has retired 
from practice, every clerk, doorkeeper, or page 
at his end of the Capitol has felt free to ap- 
peal to him to cure a headache or relieve a 
sore toe. It has been a grievous nuisance, but 
has had its alleviation now and then in a bit of 
fun. One day a policeman suddenly fell un- 
conscious in the Senate corridor, and the 
frightened bystanders sent in for Gallinger, 
who had him carried into a neighbouring com- 
mittee-room, ordered restoratives, and took 
up the work of a temporary nurse till he 
could be removed to his home. On his re- 
covery, the patient called on Gallinger and 
asked for his bill. Gallinger solemnly wrote 

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on a sheet of paper two ciphers, a decimal 
point, and two more ciphers. A brother Sena- 
tor, looking over his shoulder, exclaimed to 
some others standing near: 

"Now I understand what I never did before. 
If that's the way Gallinger practised medi- 
cine, I don't wonder he gave it up for pol- 
itics!" 

As an old-fashioned partisan, Gallinger has 
always been counted among the most critical 
opponents of civil service reform. He broke 
with President Harrison over a question of 
patronage, and thereafter refused all the Presi- 
dent's invitations to the White House. He 
once delighted the spoilsmen in the galleries 
by a speech ridiculing the regulation requir- 
ing candidates for the Railway Mail Service 
to submit to a heart-test by hopping a certain 
distance on one leg — an indiscretion of which 
the reformers took advantage to ridicule his 
pretensions to a medical education; and he 
underwent investigation for his alleged re- 
sponsibility for a circular soliciting political 
contributions from Federal office-holders in 
New Hampshire. Two years ago he added 
to his other accomplishments an essay in 

102 — 



Jacob H. GalUnger 



prophecy. Forecasting the Presidential cam- 
paign of 19 1 6, he declared that the central 
question over which the great parties would 
struggle would be the tariff, with "watchful 
waiting" for one of the interesting side-issues. 
Hughes he then considered the coming Re- 
publican candidate, while "Whitman, the 
graft-hunter," might overstep State boundaries 
and become a national figure and a "possi- 
bility" of some consequence. 

Washington, March 30, igid. 



—103 — 



ALBERT B. CUMMINS 

WHEN the political crisis of 1912 
had reached its keenest intensity, 
and Albert Baird Cummins, of 
Iowa, had avowed his purpose of voting 
for Roosevelt but his unwillingness to be- 
come an active member of a third party, 
one of his former supporters remarked with 
some feeling: "I'd like that man better if 
his name were Cummings." In spite of his 
enigmatic mode of expression, every one who 
heard him knew exactly what he meant. The 
softness of the termination suggested a dis- 
appointing elision — a hint of not quite filling 
out the original intention of the word. There 
are a good many things about Cummins that 
provoke a similar thought. Tall, without 
conveying an impression of height; with a 
pleasant but not very forceful face; with col- 
ouring that is neither aggressively light nor 
positively dark, but of a dusty greyish tone; 
and with a manner that leaves one in a little 
— 104 — 



Albert B. Cummins 



doubt what to expect at the next meeting: 
Cummins looks the compromise candidate 
rather than the controller of multitudes. 

Yet he must have a good deal of native 
power, or he could not have got where he is. 
The son of a Pennsylvania carpenter, and 
starting in life himself at the bench with the 
notion of following in his father's footsteps, 
he was diverted by his youthful reading to 
the notion of moving westward and studying 
engineering, which held forth larger promises 
in a new country than the simple trade he had 
entered upon. So well did he push this work 
that he was offered, while still a very young 
man, the position of chief engineer on a rail- 
way of growing importance, but declined it 
because an opportunity had come his way to 
prepare himself for the Iowa bar under desir- 
able auspices. His association with railway 
matters had whetted his taste for them, and he 
speedily switched from general practice into 
making a specialty of railway law. The 
carrying corporations retained him, but soon 
learned that they did not own him; and when 
they found him unwilling to go to Des Moines 
and spend his strength in the lobby of the Leg- 
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islature they grew cooler towards him. What 
he lost in one direction, however, he gained in 
another, and before long he was recognized as 
the lawyer whose special knowledge could 
most help clients in suits against the carriers. 

Meanwhile he had taken a hand in politics 
as a Prohibitionist. The Prohibition party 
passed through various vicissitudes, and he 
became convinced that launching reforms 
through third parties had its drawbacks, be- 
cause the chances were more than even that 
the moment the old parties discovered that 
a reform idea had actually taken hold of a 
goodly number of voters, one or the other 
of them would begin bidding for this support, 
usually with the result of absorbing most of 
it and leaving the adventurous third party 
with nothing but a skeleton of its former 
strength. So in due course Cummins took his 
place, with a lot of other Prohibitionists, in 
the regular Republican ranks, and set himself 
about effecting his reforms from the inside 
of the party dominant in Iowa. 

Up to about the time of his advent, the party 
had accepted protection bodily, and without 

— 1 06 — 



'Albert B. Cummins 



reservations, as one of its chief tenets. But 
it did not take Cummins a great while to figure 
out that what the Iowa farmers wanted was 
protection for their own products, but as low 
a tariff as possible on what they needed to 
buy. Here was the basis for the "Iowa idea" 
which he devised and sprang upon his public. 
"Protection," as he put the matter himself in 
an explanation to a journalistic friend, "is not 
a principle, but a policy of trade. There is 
nothing sacred in any tariff schedule." With 
this idea as a basis, he has been free to criticize 
whatever protective measures of the Repub- 
lican party he deemed injurious, or even of 
doubtful value, to the farmers of the northern 
Mississippi Valley; and the same spirit has 
animated his action on all manner of reforma- 
tory suggestions, political, social, moral, fi- 
nancial and economic, that have been brought 
forward by any group of public leaders. It 
is the snug middle ground he wishes to occupy, 
as the safest place from which to fight the 
violent and unreasonable radicals on the one 
side and the mossbacks and reactionaries on 
the other. 

It cannot be said that he does his fighting 
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hesitantly, or hides from danger. He has 
courage enough, of a sort; but, while he as- 
serts himself with much more positiveness 
than his predecessor in the Senate, Mr. Al- 
lison, we do not find him leading forlorn hopes 
in order to make a record for a cause, or leap- 
ing so far ahead of his followers that a ma- 
jority of them cannot keep up with him. It 
has been argued in his behalf that he is the 
kind of public man who can always be relied 
upon to do the well-considered thing, and 
that which is fairest for the largest number; 
but it has been asked a good many times re- 
cently whether he would be equal to a sudden 
and sharp emergency, and no satisfactory an- 
swer has been forthcoming. There are mo- 
ments, as the country has been reminded re- 
peatedly, when the popular leader who can 
drop the scales of judgment and swing the 
axe with effect is the man for the place of 
authority, and the axe has never been a famil- 
iar weapon with Iowa's favourite son. As a 
Presidential candidate, moreover, Cummins 
is not a little handicapped by conditions which 
he has helped to create; the fact that Iowa 
is already so rock-ribbed a Republican State 
— io8 — 



Albert B. Cummins 



tends to set the practical politicians looking 
elsewhere. 

There is no likelihood that the country will 
lose sight of the Senator, whatever happens 
in the political world. Every tourist who 
makes a trip by rail this summer, every trav- 
eller on business who carries a piece of check- 
able luggage, will be reminded of him at in- 
tervals; for Cummins is the author of the 
statutory provision which makes it necessary 
to sign a valuation paper as a preliminary to 
moving one's property from a baggage-room 
to a baggage-car, and the station employes 
seem to have entered into a combination to 
keep his name before the patrons of their 
roads by way of relieving themselves indi- 
vidually of responsibility for the nuisance. 
I can imagine that there are some other ele- 
ments of his fame in which he takes greater 
pride and pleasure. 

Washington, May i8, igiO. 



— 109- 



OLLIE M. JAMES 

IF it is true, as reported, that the President 
put in a personal request that Ollie M. 
James of Kentucky should be chosen to 
preside over the Democratic National Con- 
vention, it is probably a sign that he believes in 
a mascot. James presided over the tedious 
Baltimore Convention of 191 2, in which the 
supporters of Wilson sat out and tired out all 
their foes. He is about the last man who 
would be chosen on the strength of his appear- 
ance to handle a difficult situation in such a 
gathering. Big, bald, bland-faced, he is the 
perfect image of a good fellow with whom 
one might pass an enjoyable evening trading 
funny stories, but there is nothing about him 
that suggests the possibility of his mastering a 
rampant mob. Nevertheless, now and then 
an occasion arises, as it did in Baltimore, when 
an inexhaustible fund of good-nature, like that 
which James carries with him everywhere, be- 
comes the most valuable asset the gentleman 



Ollie M. James 



with the gavel can command. The Baltimore 
delegates fell into more or less of a fracas soon 
after the Convention opened. Dr. Bryan 
was there with a full equipment of disagree- 
able doses, which he was resolved to make 
those patients swallow regardless of their wry 
faces; and, unless some one had been close be- 
hincTwith an emollient, there might have been 
serious trouble. 

What has given James his steady political 
advancement from a pageship in the Kentucky 
Legislature to a seat in the United States Sen- 
ate, and what causes his selection for every 
chairmanship or other figurehead position 
that looms up anywhere in his neighbourhood, 
is his unlimited popularity. Even persons 
who afifect to regard him as a good deal of 
a joke are fond of him, and support with 
gusto a proposal to pay him some titular mark 
of respect. I once asked one of his factional 
opponents why he had not retorted to a certain 
statement James had made in a speech. He 
answered: ''It might hurt Ollie's feelings. 
Suppose he were to throw himself upon my 
shoulder and weep !" And as I pictured what 
might happen if the huge Kentuckian, over- 
— Ill — 



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come by emotion, were to lean his three hun- 
dred pounds against the frame of an ordinary 
man, I realized why my friend was reluctant 
to invite such a hazard. 

The lack of hair on James's dome-like pate 
is a constant source of delight to the humour- 
ists of his acquaintance. One day, while he 
was still in the House, he was commenting 
to a fellow Representative on the little straws 
which show the way the wind of fame is 
blowing, and cited in illustration the fact that 
a horse-trainer in Kentucky had named a 
favourite racer "Congressman James" in his 
honour. 

"Pooh!" said his colleague. "That's noth- 
ing. You were well enough known in West 
Virginia years ago for the people to name a 
post office after you." 

"Really?" cried James. "I never heard of 
it before. Which of my names did they give 
it — James, or Ollie?" 

"Neither. They called it Bald Knob." 

An oft-repeated story is of one very hot 
summer afternoon at home, when James, who 
had dropped into a suburban bookmaking 
establishment to inquire about a horse-race, 

112 — 



Ollie M, James 



suddenly heard that the house was to be 
raided, and dived out of the back door, leav- 
ing his hat and coat, v^hich he had laid aside 
as he entered. The nearest place that offered 
a refuge chanced to be a luxuriant cornfield, 
v^ith stalks more than six feet high, topped 
with umbrageous tassels, and into this he 
plunged. Though the scare was soon over, 
he did not like to venture out in his dishabille 
and present himself as a target for embarrass- 
ing comment, so he wandered about there till 
the sun went down. Residents of the neigh- 
bourhood who had happened to look out of 
their upper windows towards the field that 
afternoon had been astonished to see a globular 
object, very like a pink toy balloon, bobbing 
here and there between rows of tassels ; but few 
of them guessed what the phenomenon meant 
till the next day, when James presided at a 
public meeting, and it was a subject of re- 
mark among the spectators that the usually 
fair surface of the chairman's head had turned 
a rich bronze, dotted with spots, where peeling 
had begun. 

The Senator's early days as a lawyer were 
passed in rural Kentucky, where classical 

—113— 



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erudition was scarce. Once he undertook the 
defence of a prisoner against whom the evi- 
dence was so unimpeachable as to necessitate 
a resort to something else than argument; so 
James filled his closing speech with quotations 
from Cicero and Tacitus, Homer and 
Xenophon, in the original text as well as he 
could call it to mind. The jury handed up 
a verdict of "guilty" without quitting their 
seats. James promptly moved that the Court 
should set the verdict aside. The Judge, a 
typical country squire, with equal promptness 
refused. James then pleaded with him, ad- 
mitting that he had erred in quoting so much 
from the classics, but saying that he had been 
swept away for the moment by a flood of senti- 
ment. "I should have realized," he added, 
"that all my classical oratory would be mere 
turkey-tracks to your Honour and the jury. 
If, however, you will grant my client a new 
trial, I will endeavour to bring myself down 
to your intellectual level." 

"Your motion," thundered the magistrate, 
"is overruled, and you're fined five dollars for 



contempt!" 

"Why?" inquired James. 
—114— 



Ollie M. James 



"Because you have accused this Court of 
not knowing Latin and Greek from turkey- 
tracks." 

"Oh, very well," responded Ollie, in his 
sweetest tone. "I have no objection — now 
that I know your Honour understands me." 

No, dear reader, his name is not Oliver; it's 
really Ollie, and nothing more. 
Washington, June 22, igid. 



—lis— 



BENJAMIN R. TILLMAN 

OF all the quaint characters who have 
ever sat in a legislative chamber, 
Senator Benjamin Ryan Tillman of 
South Carolina would probably take a high 
prize in a comparative contest. A first glance 
at his face, rarely moved by a smile, and then 
subject only to a sort of cynical relaxation, may 
leave you, as a stranger, in considerable doubt 
how to approach him, if it makes any differ- 
ence to you with what reception your ad- 
vances are to meet. When you came to know 
him better, you will realize that what struck 
you as a sinister expression is really noth- 
ing worse than a fixed muscular peculiarity, 
and does not necessarily mean ill will. 
Doubtless it is chargeable in no small measure 
to the difficulty he has had in adjusting his 
sight; one eye he lost as a young man, and the 
other, having performed a double duty for 
many years, has occasionally given him so 
serious trouble that he has been almost entirely 
— ii6— 



Benjamin R. Tillman 



blind. His voice, which is extremely nasal 
and prone to querulous inflections, heightens 
the first effect of his face. 

He is a rude bit of human nature — an ele- 
mental man, as it were; but a score of years 
in the Senate have tamed him so much that he 
would hardly be recognized as the same Goth 
who descended upon that body in 1895, with 
a reputation as a vicious fighter for various 
social and economic crankisms which he had 
espoused and the possessor of a wholly un- 
bridled tongue. Everybody knew him then 
as 'Titchfork Ben," because, while exploiting 
himself on the stump as a champion of 
''farmers' rights," he assured his constituents 
that his great desire was to "punch the fat 
sides of Grover Cleveland with a political 
pitchfork." The general style of his oratory 
in those days was in keeping with such an am- 
bition. Of one adversary he declared, "He's 
a big piece of mutton, and I want to chaw 
him some"; of another, "I wish the whole 
ticket were lawyers, for I can lick a cow-pen 
full of them"; and of a third, "If he doesn't 
have a grassy row to hoe between here and 
Greenville, then I'm a nigger I" These are 
—117— 



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specimen excerpts, purged of the petty pro- 
fanities which pervaded his speeches, and for 
which he once apologized thus to a young 
woman missionary who had reproved him: 
"Those bad words are my safety-valve. All 
men must have one vice as an outlet for the Old 
Adam in them. The gambler, the drunk- 
ard, the tobacco-user injure their health, 
wear out their brains, and often squander on 
their vices the money needed by their fami- 
lies. My damning doesn't wear me out physi- 
cally or mentally, and morally it does me 
good by helping to work ofif a bad temper. I 
assure you, my dear young lady, I made a 
careful comparison of the whole list of vices 
before I chose one for myself." 

Though he is still a trifle pungent at times 
in his oratory, he has learned to express his 
thoughts without all the old vulgar embellish- 
ments. The late Senator Hoar of Massachu- 
setts probably deserved more credit than any 
one else for bringing this change about. Till- 
man, in spite of his boasted contempt for 
aristocracy, was always quick to discover the 
stamp of the genuine thing which nature 
rather than society had placed on some men, 
— ii8— 



Benjamin R. Tillman 



and Hoar typified to him the real "quality." 
Hoar, on his part, regarded Tillman very 
much as an entomologist might regard an in- 
teresting new species of buzzing and biting in- 
sect, and Tillman's undisguised homage led 
him to undertake a little reformatory work by 
suggesting lines of reading which would im- 
prove the style of the uncouth Carolinian. 
Tillman followed his counsel, and asked for 
more. One day he and Hoar got into a col- 
loquy during a Senate debate, and, to every 
one's astonishment, Tillman bandied back and 
forth with his learned adversary all kinds of 
quotations from erudite authorities, till one of 
the other Senators interrupted with a humor- 
ous remonstrance against Tillman's robbing 
Hoar of his laurels as a scholar. 

''I can't help it," retorted Tillman; "I got 
all my points out of the books he told me to 
read." 

Tillman is now in the midst of his fourth 
term as a Senator. It seems unlikely that he 
will enter upon a fifth, though he may wish to. 
He is nearly seventy years old, he is thought 
to be not so strong in his State as he was a 
while ago, his bodily powers show markedly 
—119— 



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the effect of age, and there are reported to be 
some younger South Carolinians who think 
his toga would be about their size. The com- 
bination may prove too much for any yearn- 
ings he still cherishes. 

Washington, June zg, igiO. 



•120^ 



OSCAR W. UNDERWOOD 

TOM REED'S drawling description of 
the Senate as "the place where good 
politicians go when they die," has re- 
curred to the minds of many Washingtonians 
in connection with the fortunes of Oscar W. 
Underwood of Alabama. In the House Un- 
derwood was a big man. He had scope there 
for his talents as an economist, an orator, and 
a composer of controversies. He had his 
recognized place in the scheme of things, and 
an admiring group of followers. During 
the last part of his service, he was the 
chief spokesman for his party and for the Ad- 
ministration. As a Representative, moreover, 
no settled tradition blocked his path to the 
White House, whither his ambition had 
turned its eyes. Translated to the other end 
of the Capitol, he found all these conditions 
changed. He became a single unit in an or- 
ganism composed of ninety-six. He was a 
"new man," and therefore at a discount for the 

121 — 



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present. Half the rules of discipline to which 
he was subject were unwritten, but not the less 
restrictive of individual freedom, and until 
his dark hair had changed to white he could 
hardly hope to have any hand in modifying 
them. Here was a body in which leadership 
was not to be won by a contest of logic, or wit, 
or resourcefulness on the floor, but by seniority 
of service or by some accident's emptying the 
places above him. The existing Administra- 
tion had its spokesman already installed. 
And to cap the heap of discouraging elements, 
history reminded him that for more than a 
half-century only one man had been elected to 
the Presidency after sitting in the Senate, and 
he only by a chapter of coincidences. 

In view of all this. Underwood's recent ex- 
hibition of independence in refusing to bow to 
caucus dictation is hardly to be wondered at, 
especially when the hand that cracked the 
whip over his head was Stone of Missouri, 
whom he could not regard as in any respect 
his equal. How far he will continue his con- 
tumacy is still doubtful, for Stone, w^hose au- 
thority on a large public question would be 
negligible but for the fact that he is nominally 

122 



Oscar W , Underwood 



the President's mouthpiece, will probably be 
well supported by the contingent who hope to 
use his favour as a makeweight in their nego- 
tiations with the dispenser of good things at 
the other end of the Avenue. Should the 
President be re-elected in November, Under- 
wood will find the road of independence 
harder than ever to travel, though under the 
latest amendment to the Constitution he can go 
back to his State at the end of his term and 
appeal directly to his people, trusting to their 
good will and their pride in his past accom- 
plishments to return him for another six years. 
On the whole, the outlook is not especially 
cheerful for him, and may be tinged with a 
trifle of bitterness when he reflects that it was 
upon him that both President and party leaned 
when a new revenue law, embodying the prin- 
ciples set forth in the tariff plank of the Demo- 
cratic platform adopted at Baltimore, had to 
be framed and steered through the house of its 
origin. 

Some of his oldest and best friends assert 

that Underwood will yet make his way to the 

top in the Senate as he did in the House, and 

without any sacrifices of what he holds im- 

—123— 



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portant. They insist that his usually quiet 
and untheatrical way of going about his busi- 
ness, whatever it may be, is far more effective 
in the long run than the boisterous or domi- 
neering methods of some of his adversaries. 
He is a great worker, but his machinery makes 
little noise; in past times he has frequently 
finished his job while his competitors were still 
getting started on theirs. S^o well was his 
efficiency recognized in the House that, when 
he was about to move out, both sides of the 
chamber united in a demonstration of respect 
and liking that would have touched the heart 
of a much more stolid man. Still, this is a 
radical era, and Underwood is a conservative. 
He has some very definite ideas on the chief 
issues of the day, and he sticks to them even 
when most of his associates are disposed to 
yield theirs to the pressure of the general cur- 
rent. His theory is that, if you are right, 
you can afford to be patient and wait for the 
opposition to wear itself out. 

To look at him, you would not take him for 

a leader. He has height and size enough, 

and, in its way, presence enough, but when 

he is at rest these do not impress you at a 

— 124 — 



Oscar W . Underwood 



first view. His hair is so uncompromisingly 
well parted and brushed, and holds so uni- 
formly to its place from day to day, that at first 
you suspect him of wearing a wig. His eyes, 
intelligent and pleasant of expression, lack 
the searching quality we commonly expect in 
those of a man who is hewing his way through 
obstructions. It is only when we see him in 
full action that we realize who and what he 
is. Calm, clear reasoning, devoid of any spec- 
tacular tricks, characterizes the part he takes 
in debate; and when he has finished speaking, 
though you may still disagree with his con- 
clusions, you are bound to admit that he has 
made the best that can be made of his case. 

By the way, does any one except himself 
know what Underwood's middle initial stands 
for? 

Washington, September y, igi6. 



—125— 



ELIHU ROOT 

PERHAPS the characters of most men of 
light and leading in our busy era 
would, if analyzed minutely, present 
some startling incongruities. Elihu Root, 
who has just left the United States S'enate to 
guide the course of the Constitutional Con- 
vention in New York, offers no exception to 
the rule. He seems to change traits as he 
changes fields of activity. As a lawyer he is 
bloodless, unemotional, incisive; as a states- 
man he is thoughtful, elastic, imaginative; as 
an administrator he is calm, firm, clear of per- 
ception, and definite of aim; humanly, he is 
temperamental, with impulses quickly respon- 
sive to either genial or pathetic appeals, deeply 
attached to his friends, chivalrous toward his 
foes. Those who know him on only one of 
his several sides know but a small part of the 
man. 

Most persons coming into contact with Root 
for the first time receive an impression of 
— 126 — 



Elihu Root 



indolence, due about equally, doubtless, to his 
habitual deliberateness of speech and casual 
manner. There is no affectation about either 
of these; they are merely a result of his long 
training in ways which develop self-confi- 
dence. In troublous times, when a fussy man 
would pace the floor, or rock violently, or 
swing his arms in gesticulation. Root lolls 
back in his chair, with one hand in his pocket, 
and the only sign of his consciousness of any- 
thing afoot is a slight deepening of the vertical 
crease in his forehead just above the nose. If 
he has to administer a rebuke, it never takes 
the explosive form, but always that of an un- 
usually cool, judicial statement of the cause 
of offence to the offender. Shams he sees 
through almost intuitively, and wastes no time 
on them, contenting himself with putting them 
into their proper place and ignoring the 
matter from that point forward. 

At the other extreme, his sense of humour 
may be vigorously stirred without provoking 
an outright laugh. A smile, an infectious 
chuckle, a witty retort, or an amused inter- 
rogatory which carries the joke a stage fur- 
ther, may show his appreciation, but that is 
. — 127 — 



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probably all the evidence he will vouchsafe 
of how he has been affected. Let something 
recall to him, however, a touching experience 
of his youth, a great man whom he has 
known and revered, or a period of storm and 
stress in which he has played a part, and 
he surprises every one with the fund of real 
sentiment that lies hidden behind his seeming 
impassiveness. Even here may come to the 
surface one of those combinations of deep 
feeling and hard practicality which excite the 
wonder of undiscrminating observers. Take 
the negro problem for an example. Nobody 
in the United States cherishes to this day 
a more robust reminiscent horror of slavery 
than Root, for he passed his boyhood under 
the roof of one of the stations on the under- 
ground railway; yet he is counted among the 
small school of Republican leaders who re- 
gard our experiment with negro suffrage as a 
failure. Not many an active politician of that 
party, however genuine his convictions on the 
same side of the suffrage question, would risk 
a voluntary enunciation of them, lest his gen- 
eral attitude towards human freedom and 
racial justice might suffer misunderstanding. 
—128— 



Elihu Root 



No such compunction on this or any other 
subject disturbs Root: if the logic of a situa- 
tion be sufficiently cogent to settle his mind 
on it, he can see no objection to avowing the 
fact. 

This does not mean that he is especially 
communicative by disposition. On the con- 
trary, he absorbs far more than he dispenses. 
His methods of evading an impertinent in- 
quisition are varied and entertaining. About 
a dozen years ago the Supreme Court of the 
United States delivered oracular decisions in 
two cases involving the relations of our 
colonies to the rest of the Republic, and one 
of the Washington gossips tried to embar- 
rass Root by plumping at him the question 
whether, under the court's ruling, *'the Con- 
stitution follows the flag." "As far as I can 
make out from hearing the decisions read," 
answered Root, after a moment's reflection, 
"I infer that the Constitution does follow the 
flag— but doesn't catch up with it." Again, 
when asked whether certain statements that 
had been made about him in the press were 
true, his only reply was to open a book and 
read aloud, with great impressiveness, Par- 

— 129 — 



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son Weems's story of little George Wash- 
ington and the cherry tree. The inquirer was 
baffled; for the parable might mean either 
that the story about him was as fictitious as 
Weems's about Washington, or that he had 
done the worst the article had charged, and 
"couldn't tell a lie" to save himself from the 
consequences. 

Is Root sincere in his refusal to consider 
a nomination for the Presidency? Unques- 
tionably; and this not alone because of his 
age, but also because he is perfectly aware 
that qualifications for efficient public service, 
such as he has shown in an extraordinary 
degree, count for nothing as a passport to elec- 
tive office if unaccompanied by that subtle 
something called "availability." Any Presi- 
dent would rejoice to get a man of his capacity 
for the Cabinet, for a foreign embassy, per- 
haps for a seat on the highest bench; but, for 
all that, he would be put aside, by the multi- 
tude who cast votes, in favour of some smaller 
man whom they recognize as more of their 
own sort. It was the same lack of the 
"whooping-up" quality which in 1880 dis- 
placed Edmunds for Blaine, and in more re- 
—130 — 



Elihu Root 



cent years would have kept Hanna out of the 
running indefinitely. Unless all signs fail, 
his task as a constitution-maker will put the 
finishing touch to Root's political career. 
Washington, April 8, 1915. 



—131— 



CHAMP CLARK 

IF there is one man in the United States 
who, at the bottom of his heart, believes 
that he knows what moved Bryan to resign 
the Secretaryship of State, it is probably 
Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Rep- 
resentatives ; and if he were to give tongue 
frankly to his faith, it would explain the inci- 
dent as grounded in a hope of breaking down 
Wilson. It would be as easy to picture Carrie 
Nation signing a testimonial for a whiskey ad- 
vertisement as to conceive Clark giving Bryan 
public credit for sincerity. This was not 
always so. Before their collision at the 
Baltimore Convention of 191 2, Bryan had no 
warmer friend. But Clark is as good a hater 
as he is a politician, if this is not putting it 
too mildly. It is not so much what a man 
does that turns Clark against him, as the way 
he does it; and, though he cannot be accused 
of enthusiasm for Wilson, he bears no in- 
— 132— 



Champ Clark 



dividual grudge against the President, and 
may be trusted to deal generously with the 
larger policies of the Administration, as in the 
case of the shipping bill, where he held his 
nose with one hand while beating the drum 
for recruits with the other. For Bryan, how- 
ever, his hostility is unmeasured, and will last 
until the Judgment Day. 

He used to like and admire Theodore 
Roosevelt in spite of their partisan differences, 
pronouncing him a strong man with mistaken 
opinions; but when he heard a younger mem- 
ber of the ex-President's family quoted at 
Baltimore as saying that "Father is praying 
for Clark," he resented the implication so 
that thenceforward the strong man became a 
"mountebank," to be relegated to the same 
limbo of contempt with the "pestiferous" 
Mann and the "lunatic" Hobson. The late 
Thomas B. Reed, on the other hand, still re- 
mains one of his heroes in the same spirit in 
which the memory of a saint who really de- 
serves canonization commands the reverence 
of the openminded Protestant. 

Clark can hardly be classed among the 
leaders of his party, though unquestionably 
—133— 



ZLIJ'' T' "°'^'"^ figureheads. He 
1 nomas A. Hendricks. There are A/fo 

with certain elemen of "eserved'sr"".'' 
I'ke the characteristic "portraTt nf '"^ ' 
™an" in the early seventies bnd t ''""" 

Sindt-a^r^'^^^/"---^"^^^^^^^ 



—134- 



Champ Clark 



the utter stranger would feel no hesitancy in 
approaching him. 

The same atmosphere pervades his speech, 
which has the quaint inflections and slurring 
enunciation that give point to the homeliest 
illustrative anecdote he uses on the hustings, 
and make him a favourite as an orator at 
general gatherings. His unusual mode of 
speaking to or of an adversary occasionally 
has transgressed the parliamentary canons, as 
when, years ago, he warned Mr. Boutelle of 
Maine, one of his peskiest interrupters in a 
House debate, to "keep his mouth shut." 
Anon, it goes down in history embalmed in an 
epigram like his response to some Repub- 
lican's allusion to President McKinley as the 
"advance agent of prosperity": "That ad- 
vance agent has got so far ahead of his show 
as to be useless further for advertising 
purposes." 

It is amusing to note one coincidence in 
the careers of Clark and the Speaker he was 
elected to supplant which seems to put them 
equally in the insurgent category. "Uncle 
Joe" Cannon began life as a Quaker, and was 
solemnly read out of that communion because 
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he insisted on marrying a girl of another; 
Clark was brought up in the Campbellite 
congregation, and was expelled for dancing 
in disregard of an admonition from the elders. 
Cannon had a fight on his hands as a conse- 
quence of his dereliction, and carried it 
through; but Clark circumvented his irate 
elders by strategy, refusing to confess that he 
had done anything wicked, yet attending the 
next meeting and standing up when the min- 
ister called for those sinners who desired to 
join the church. He knew that they could 
not afford to turn the cold shoulder to an ap- 
plicant for the means of grace; so back he 
went in spite of his sinful fling. 

The name "Champ," which excites so many 
inquiries from the uninitiated, has proved a 
great political asset for Clark. Like most of 
the good things of life he enjoys, he gave it to 
himself. His parents christened him James 
Beauchamp Clark; but in the back country 
Beauchamp was too much of a mouthful, and 
Jim Clark, as his associates would surely call 
him, was not distinctive enough for a lad with 
ambitions. So he chopped off the first half 
of his four-syllabled name, and as Champ he 
—136— 



Champ Clark 



was admitted to the bar, married, and took 
office. Once in a while somebody who thinks 
to curry favour with him by a resort to the or- 
namentals resuscitates the ''James Beau" in 
addressing him, and then the air turns blue. 
"One of the first things I learned as a law 
student," says the Speaker, "was that a man 
has as good a right to change his name as to 
have his hair cut!" 

Washington, June 24, IQ15. 



■137— 



CLAUDE KITCHIN 

SOME critics of our national politics re- 
gard it as strange that the Democratic 
floor leader in the House of Representa- 
tives should cut loose from the Democratic 
President at a juncture like this. As a matter 
of fact, it is more wonderful when two men so 
absolutely unlike in antecedents, temperament, 
tastes, mental attitude and methods are found 
in the same factional galley. As Claude Kit- 
chin of North Carolina voted in the Baltimore 
Convention of 191 2 as one of Wilson's first- 
last-and-all-the-time contingent, it is natural 
to assume that he was attracted to his candi- 
date by the subtle force which so often draws 
opposites together. The two men have only 
one quality in common — facility in self-ex- 
pression; but even here they dififer markedly, 
for Kitchin's form is the loose, careless, easy- 
going manner of the near South with which 
Champ Clark has done so much to familiarize 
us, while Wilson's is that of the scholar 
-138- 



Claude Kitchin 



emerging from his cloister to deal for a while 
with practical problems. 

Listening to Kitchin, even when he is 
worked up to a fine glow in support of a cause, 
you are impressed with his unwillingness to 
be hurried. The voice, the oratorical im- 
pulse, the slipshod consonants and sprawling 
vowels of his enunciation, all fit well the ap- 
pearance of the man, with his broad, large- 
featured face, his mobile mouth and his stocky 
neck, not to mention his black suit, planter's 
soft hat and string tie. And when you hear 
his sweeping indictment of all the leading 
American industries for robbing the people, 
and his demand that one policy shall be pro- 
moted and another abandoned because the 
people wish it so, you are tempted to thrill, 
at least, in response, until you inquire where he 
gathered so extensive a knowledge of how the 
people feel. It is with something like a 
shock that you discover that he hails from a 
fair-sized village in an old State where, a 
century and a quarter after its inclusion in the 
Union, it still takes from eight to fourteen 
counties to make up a Representative unit of 
190,000 population, and from a district of 
—139— 



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which the northern and southern boundaries 
are one hundred and ten miles apart. It is a 
suggestive reflection on our form of democ- 
racy to find a man with such an outlook upon 
the world's affairs heading a serious schism 
in the party temporarily in control of the 
Government. 

Kitchin has been in Congress now for more 
than fourteen years. He is said to have 
gained his first prominence at home by a dash- 
ing campaign against a combination of ne- 
groes, white Republicans and third-party men 
of various names who had dominated the poli- 
tics of his part of the State for a long while, 
the numerical preponderance of the negroes 
thereabout giving them a tremendous leverage 
in public matters. The revolt, thanks largely 
to his eloquence and fearlessness of conse- 
quences, was successful, though during the last 
part of it he had a hard time dodging a sheriff's 
officer who was after him with a writ, trying 
to arrest him for intimidation of voters. The 
gravamen of this charge, as local tradition has 
it, was his visit to a school-teacher who was 
suspected of having striven to stir up the ne- 
— 140 — 



Claude Kitchin 



groes to a more vigorous assertion of their 
political rights. Kitchin, it is said, descended 
unexpectedly upon the man, and in his best 
oratorical style delivered a warning that, if 
anything should go amiss in the neighbourhood 
as the result of this incendiary conduct, the 
whites would probably hold the agitator 
rather than the agitatees responsible; "and," 
he concluded, "if they get so hot that they for- 
get themselves, they might take you out some 
night and hang you to a tree." 

The admonition sank in effectively; the 
teacher, resolved to live no longer in a place 
where people could be so rude to one another, 
promptly removed to parts unknown, and the 
negroes proved less troublesome to their 
Democratic neighbours thenceforward. In 
recognition of what Kitchin had done to up- 
hold Caucasian supremacy, the district lost 
no time in naming him for Congress. He 
was truly the popular choice. He made no 
stumping tour, and seemed almost indifferent 
to the victory won at the polls. 

Coming from a fine peanut country which 
does not want tariff protection, but does want 
—141— 



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its appliances for tilling the ground put on the 
free list, Kitchin steered straight for the com- 
mittee on ways and means and obtained a place 
down in the tail of the roll, from which he has 
risen by degrees through the death, defeat or 
translation of the fellow partisans who out- 
ranked him, so that, with Underwood's pro- 
motion to the Senate, he became chairman of 
the committee and ex-officio majority leader 
of the House. Ever since a schoolmaster had 
so much to do indirectly with shaping his 
career, he has had a tender spot in his heart 
for the pedagogic profession; and between 
that fact and the yeoman work of Bryan, 
whom he admires and trusts to an extreme, he 
became identified with Mr. Wilson's phalanx 
at Baltimore. Their later relations were due 
to his seeing the President rather intimately 
during the latter's radical days. Their pres- 
ent difference as to policy will not be likely 
to throw any chill upon their personal friend- 
ship, at least so far as Kitchin's share is con- 
cerned; he took his stand for reasons which, 
whether right or wrong, liberal or bigoted, 
were his own and actually conscientious, and 
he will stand alone if need be, as he did when 
— 142 — 



Claude Kitchin 



he fought his first law case through against 
his father as counsel for the other side, and 
won it. 

Washington, March 2, igid. 



—143— 



JAMES R. MANN 

IF you met James Robert Mann of Illinois 
in the street without suspecting his iden- 
tity, you would probably take him for a 
plain business-man pretty well on in years, who 
had been working a little too hard and was 
feeling the effect of it. The grizzled grey of 
his hair, beard and moustache conveys a sug- 
gestion of shagginess, in spite of their being al- 
ways scrupulously well cared for; his com- 
plexion lacks transparency; his eyes, though 
not conspicuously deep-set, lie far enough 
back to look not quite wholesome, and this sug- 
gestion is augmented by the brows and lashes* 
that compass them. But there is nothing 
worn-out about Mann when you see him on 
the floor of the House and in action; there he 
shows a quickness of apprehension and a 
keenness of expression that would put many 
a younger man to his trumps to match. 

As a minority leader Mann is capable, but 
full of faults. For one thing, he is unsympa- 
—144— 



James R. Mann 



thetic by nature and only spasmodically tact- 
ful. Here is where he embodies a notable 
contrast with Mr. Cannon, for instance, and 
Mr. Dingley, both of whom were remarkably 
human in their handling of the responsibili- 
ties of leadership. Cannon, with his eccen- 
tricities of phrase, could give even a plainly 
hostile act a semi-humorous twist; while 
Dingley, with his absolute lack of humour in 
himself and his inability to appreciate it in 
anybody else, would sometimes disarm the 
fiercest foe by his kindly seriousness. Mann 
more resembles Payne in his attitude toward 
the other side of the House, though he is as 
spirited as Payne was ponderous. That is 
what causes so much surprise at his oc- 
casional failure of discrimination in deciding 
what items shall, and what shall not, receive 
the party's support. It seems as if anything 
new to his knowledge shall for that cause 
be held under suspicion, or even condemned 
without an adequate hearing. Hence, as to 
most progressively novel measures, Mann's 
downright opposition can be counted on with 
considerable certainty till greater familiarity 
with the subject or the logic of an opponent's 
—145— 



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argument has convinced him that he is headed 
in the wrong direction. Such a change in 
his own mind, however, does not necessarily 
draw any verbal admission from him. 

Thanks to this trait, Mann, while ambitious 
to be, and to be recognized as, a severe 
economist, is as likely as not to obstruct such 
a piece of legislation as a project for con- 
solidating the work of two Government de- 
partments in the same field; for his fear of a 
new idea which involves a little unaccustomed 
present expense, and may develop into an 
entering wedge for more new things, blinds 
him to the saving which must be efifected 
eventually through keeping two groups of 
men from going over the same ground twice. 
He is so close a scrutinizer of bills and reso- 
lutions, and so "cranky" on any which squint 
in the direction of a personal interest, that 
he has succeeded to the title which used to 
be applied to the late William S. Holman of 
Indiana — the Great Objector. Other mem- 
bers were wont to resent Holman's interfer- 
ence with their projects, but not with the bit- 
terness with which they come back at Mann. 
Holman, when thus made a target, had a 
— 146 — 



James R. Mann 



habit of sinking into himself like a telescope, 
dropping down on the base of his spine, and 
staring silently into vacancy while his critics 
held the floor; Mann, on the contrary, almost 
always hits back, as if the attack had stung 
him and he wished to make his assailants 
regret their temerity. 

Wherever you hear Mann discussed as a 
lawmaker, you will hear strong emphasis laid 
upon his industrious habits. In one sense 
this is a deserved compliment, but what has 
won it for him is not so much his industry 
as his methodical ways. Other men may be 
just as industrious without getting so much 
credit for it, because their manner of work 
includes a great deal of waste effort. Mann 
eliminates waste as far as practicable by 
making everything subject to a system. He 
is very rarely, indeed, caught unprepared 
when any subject comes up in the House. Of 
course, he has the initial advantage over 
many of his associates on the floor of having 
had nearly twenty years' experience in fed- 
eral legislation, so that he knows the Con- 
gressional machine in every wheel and rod and 
joint; but in addition to this, he has formed 
—147^ 



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a habit of classifying and pigeonholing, so to 
speak, whatever fact or figure comes his way. 
A bill that gets past the mere introductory 
stage is glanced over by his competent clerks, 
who lay it before him annotated in various 
lines; and by keeping abreast of what they 
have predigested — a task in which a strong 
and well-trained memory proves of immeasur- 
able assistance — he is ready, the moment any 
one calls the bill up on the floor, to arm him- 
self for its support or denunciation. More- 
over, he utilizes the odd moments which most 
other men treat as of no account, for keeping 
up broadly with the progress of the world. 
The Library of Congress knows him as an in- 
cessant if not actually an omnivorous reader, 
and he reads with such rapidity that there is a 
constant flow of new books through his office. 
Here his memory comes into active play again, 
though it retains for him more generalities 
than details. 

It is not often that Mann gives his stalwart 
partisanship a long enough rest to speak ap- 
provingly of the conduct or opinions of any 
dangerous Democrat. Even when he follows 
an amiable tradition of the House so far as 
—148— 



James R. Mann 



to pass a pleasant comment upon his dearest 
official foe, the Speaker, he does it in a 
manner which leaves no doubt that his com- 
pliments have their origin in respect for 
precedent rather than in the promptings of 
the heart. Possibly this explains why Mr. 
Clark, when he wishes to say something agree- 
able to the Republicans, seems to prefer dwell- 
ing reminiscently on Cannon's virtues to pay- 
ing a more up-to-date tribute to Mann's. 
Washington, June 8, igid. 



—149— 



JOSEPH G. CANNON 

THE other evening some one, alluding to 
the personal appearance of Joseph G. 
Cannon of Illinois, compared him to 
the prophet Ezekiel. Up sprang Cannon, 
who was within hearing. ''You're wrong," he 
exclaimed, swinging his long left arm around 
his head in one of his flail-like gestures; 
"Ezekiel was driven into exile and stayed 
there; but I've come back!" It is doubtful 
whether a half-dozen men in all Washington, 
including the clergy, could have been so quick 
to detect the weak spot in the parallel; but it 
is one of Cannon's great points as an orator 
that you cannot find a Scripture story which 
he doesn't know by heart. He has sometimes 
said that the only books he ever saw as a boy, 
outside of his common-school textbooks, were 
the Bible and Josephus. 

The arm-swinging was quite as characteris- 
tic. Cannon formed the habit when he first 
became a public orator, and he is helpless 
— 15< 



Joseph G. Cannon 



without it. Once in a debate while Carlisle 
was Speaker, he tried to beg a few minutes' 
time from the late "Sunset" Cox, who hap- 
pened to have the floor. 

"If the gentleman from Illinois will put his 
hands in his pockets," said Cox, "I will yield 
the floor to him for as long a time as he will 
keep them there." 

Into his side-pockets dived Cannon's hands 
at once; but before he had finished three sen- 
tences out they came again, and went whirl- 
ing around his head. Down came the Speak- 
er's gavel: "The gentleman's time has ex- 
pired!" And Cannon dropped into his seat 
amid the roars of the House. 

Cannon has now been a national figure for 
forty-three years, having received his first elec- 
tion to Congress in 1872. From the day he en- 
tered the Capitol he has been a power there. 
In 1890 he was defeated for re-election, 
just as were McKinley and other advocates 
of the high tariff act of the Fifty-first Con- 
gress; but, after trying some one else for a 
single term, his constituents were glad to send 
him back to his old place. The same thing 
has happened this time. There have been 
—151— 



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revolts against his authority as Speaker, and 
columns of newspaper space have been royally 
expended in showing what a bad man he is, 
and yet it does not seem possible to make 
most people believe it for long. The truth 
undoubtedly is that, while no one can deny 
that Cannon has serious faults, he has also 
some compensating qualities which come into 
strong accentuation when his enemies overdo 
their censure of him. The professional labour 
element discovered this when they attempted 
to browbeat him into reconstructing his com- 
mittees so as to let in men whom they wanted 
in places which he had selected for others. 
They were reminded of it once more when 
they ran a candidate against him in his home 
district. The insurgents discovered it when 
they threatened to drive him out of the 
Speaker's chair in mid-session. The Senators 
learned it when they opposed his efifort to 
give the House its rightful share in legisla- 
tion, because it meant a shortage in the "pork- 
barrel" at which they had been helping them- 
selves without stint for so many years. 

Cannon is not an elegant man. His ever- 
present tip-tilted cigar is sufficient evidence 
—152— 



Joseph G, Cannon 



of that, to say nothing of his variegated vo- 
cabulary of denunciation. When a book- 
agent lured him into the purchase of a set of 
volumes which turned out, on examination, ab- 
surdly poor stuff, he wrote out his check to 
the order of the publishers, but endorsed it: 
"This check for $150 is in full settlement, both 
legal and moral, for an edition of ' — — ,' 
which is not worth a single damn. We are 
never too old to learn, and the way your 
gentlemanly agent came it over your Uncle 
Joseph was well worth the money." 

Next to Thomas B. Reed, no man who has 
ever filled the Speaker's chair has been so ac- 
tive in trying to reduce the waste of time in 
the House. Once the invalid pensions com- 
mittee turned in its usual crop of some hun- 
dreds of bills, most of them with favourable 
and unanimous reports, and the House accep- 
ted them in committee of the whole. If, in the 
regular session, they had been put through 
the usual process of reading every one by 
title and voting on it separately, they would 
have consumed an indefinite period for mere 
form's sake. Cannon cut the matter short 
by proposing that, by unanimous consent, the 
—153— 



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House vote on them in a bunch. This was 
done, and in hardly more time than it takes 
to tell the story they had gone into the record 
as passed. The incident scandalized the strict 
constructionists, but saved hours of time 
which the House was able to devote to other 
business, and the result was precisely the 
same. On another occasion, after he had 
nearly splintered the top of his desk in trying 
to pound the House into good order with his 
gavel, he handed the book of House rules to 
the clerk, and had the passage about etiquette 
read aloud. Members who had paid no at- 
tention to the gavel suddenly "took notice" 
when they discovered that they were violat- 
ing the solemn rules of the House, and were 
individually liable to punishment. 

Cannon, who began life as a Quaker, and 
was read out of meeting because he persisted 
in marrying the girl of his choice in spite 
of her not belonging to the same body, has 
lived to help bury the elders who condemned 
him for his non-conformity. He is about 
eighty years old now, and expects to live to 
be a hundred. He was asked once for his 

—154— 



Joseph G, Cannon 



rules of living, and these were what he cited 
in response: 

''Honour thy father and thy mother. 

"Take no thought of the morrow; don't 
worry. 

"Work, work, work, with hands, legs, feet 
and brain. 

"Learn to sing, no matter how miserably. 

"Sing and laugh and be happy; and keep 
on, and keep a-keeping on." 

Washington, December 23, 191 5. 



■155— 



L 



JEANNETTE RANKIN, M. C. 

" "'^ ADIES and gentlemen of the House of 
Representatives." That is what it 
sounded like when Mr. Balfour 
opened his recent address to the House. 
What he meant, doubtless, was to throw 
in a slight pause after the "Ladies" — a def- 
erential acknowledgment of the presence 
of the multitude of women in the gal- 
leries; but the pause, if any, was so nearly 
indistinguishable that an enthusiastic suffra- 
gist who sat near me whispered: "He recog- 
nizes Jeannette Rankin as embodying the 
whole sex!" And well he might; for in spite 
of her unusual position and surroundings, she 
remains the typical woman from top to toe. 
The top is especially prominent, crowned as it 
is with a mass of brown hair slightly streaked 
with grey, worn a la Pompadour in a fashion 
that emphasizes its abundance. The next 
most noticeable feature is the nose, which is 
large, straight in outline, and fairly dominates 



Jeannette Rankin, M. C, 



the face, particularly in profile. The chin 
stands out well, but is round, and reduced in 
conspicuousness by a fulness of the cheeks 
which extends down to the line of the jaw. 
Her small, rather slight figure, clad in well-fit- 
ting garments which rumour credits her with 
making with her own hands, adds to her thor- 
oughly feminine effect. The V-shaped open- 
ing at the neck, and the use of lace and tulle 
wherever a man would use flat linen stiff with 
starch, differentiate her completely from the 
background against which she is projected in 
her daily work. Strangers visiting Congress 
look for her before asking to be shown Champ 
Clark and "Uncle Joe" Cannon — a distinction 
in itself; and almost invariably their first re- 
mark is one of surprise that she has nothing of 
the Amazon in her appearance. Her face is 
mobile, her motions are lithe, and her manner 
has all the vivacity comportable with her ob- 
vious seriousness of purpose. Her voice has 
not, up to the hour of this writing, received a 
real test of effectiveness in a hall notorious for 
its bad acoustics when a debate is in full 
swing; but her responses on roll-call, while 
distinct enough for all practical needs, lack 
—157— 



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the ringing quality which arrests attention in 
this tumultuous body. 

Next to her unmasculine make-up, what as- 
tonishes most new observers is the manner in 
which Miss Rankin is treated by the men 
among whom she is thrown. Not even the 
cowboys of her home State — a class who hide 
a rare strain of chivalry behind a rough ex- 
terior — could manifest more respect for her 
womanhood than these rough-and-tumble 
Congressmen. In any situation involving 
precedence, everybody stands aside for her to 
pass. During a session she is seldom or never 
alone; some man takes a seat beside her and 
falls into a whispered conversation, or she 
seeks out one whom she wishes to consult about 
a pending measure, and soon their heads are 
close together. In two respects at least she 
is setting an excellent example to her col- 
leagues: in prompt and regular attendance, 
and in keeping track of what is going on. If 
amendments are coming in thick and fast, as 
often happens when the bill under consider- 
ation is one which the House is ready to ac- 
cept in spirit but wishes to modify in form, 
she keeps a pad and pencil always in hand 
-158- 



Jeannette Rankin, M. C, 



and conscientiously jots down the proposed 
changes in phraseology. From the present 
outlook it would not be surprising if her in- 
fluence produced a real change in the be- 
haviour of the House in more ways than in 
mere personal gallantry; for the rudest fighters 
can hardly fail to take note of the presence of a 
woman among them, or to be reminded of the 
fact if momentarily they forget it. 

Of course, it is unfortunate that Miss 
Rankin's first important vote on the floor 
should have been one in which she could not 
with an easy conscience voice the prevailing 
sentiment of her own district or of the country 
at large, for her attitude on the war issue can 
never be expunged from the record, however 
earnestly she may devote her energies here- 
after to the national cause. Whether she was 
visibly and audibly overcome by her emotions 
— a question on which much stress is laid in 
certain quarters — we may leave the historians 
to decide among themselves. Male law- 
makers have occasionally exhibited emotional 
weakness under equally trying conditions, 
without provoking invidious comments on the 
capacity of their sex as a whole. Miss Ran- 
—159— 



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kin having happened to be the first and only 
woman in Congress when the war crisis arose, 
it is far too soon to draw sweeping conclusions 
on the wisdom of our latest suffrage experi- 
ment. A pleasanter thing to remember is 
that, in a State which gave the Democratic 
Presidential ticket fifty per cent, more votes 
than the Republican, she carried, as a Repub- 
lican, one of the two Representative districts 
by a plurality of more than six thousand, and 
with a campaign expenditure of less than seven 
hundred dollars. 

Although sufficient mention has been made 
already, perhaps, of Miss Rankin's feminine 
appearance, it would be a pity to pass over, in 
this connection, her evident love of children 
and her attraction for them. Several mem- 
bers, trading on a traditional courtesy of the 
House, brought with them to the reception in 
honour of Balfour the young folk of their 
families, and some of these speedily made 
their way to the Lady from Montana and took 
possession of her. She had them sitting in 
her lap or snuggling against her while the 
formal meeting was in progress, and, when the 
handshaking procession formed, one or two 
— 1 60 — 



Jeannette Rankin, M. C, 

clung to her. She smiles a good deal at all 
times, but seemed particularly beaming when 
chatting with her little friends. Nor would 
this thumbnail sketch be faithful to nature if 
it omitted to add that our fair young pioneer 
carries with her, while engaged in the business 
of lawmaking not less than in her other oc- 
cupations, that characteristic emblem of her 
sex, the tiny handbag. It has never been my 
privilege to peep into it, but various indica- 
tions suggest the guess that it contains the 
familiar equipment of purse and keys, mirror 
and handkerchief — and p-wd-r-p-f¥! 
Washington, May 31, IQ17. 



■161— 



JULIUS KAHN 

THE success of Julius Kahn of Cali- 
fornia, in carrying through the House 
the least attractive of the President's 
great war measures, and this in the teeth of 
vigorous opposition from leaders of the Presi- 
dent's party and considerable criticism from 
his own associates, affords a striking illustra- 
tion of what a cool head, a fair vocabulary, a 
pleasing presence, and an inexhaustible fund 
of sunny temper will do for a man in a leg- 
islative emergency. Two circumstances lend 
especial interest to his victory: his German 
birth and his loyal Republicanism. Born of 
native parents in the Grand Duchy of Baden, 
he was brought to this country in childhood, 
and obtained his schooling in San Francisco 
in good American fashion by working for a 
local bakery every day before and after study 
hours. As a half-grown boy he showed so 
marked an elocutionary bent that his friends 
encouraged him to seek a livelihood on the 
— 162 — 



Julius Kahn 



stage, and it so chanced that his first appear- 
ance was as Shylock — a part which Hebrews 
commonly condemn as an unjust caricature on 
their race. With Kahn the artistic ideal 
threw all racial antipathies into the shadow, 
and within two years his work had won him a 
call to New York, where he remained till the 
early nineties, supporting Booth, the elder 
Salvini, Jefferson, Florence, Clara Morris, 
and other famous actors of that period. 

Not all the charms of mimic life, however, 
could blind him to the fact that in the theat- 
rical profession increasing years are a handi- 
cap, notwithstanding the ripened experience 
they bring; and after a period of deliberation 
he decided to study for the bar, where ma- 
turity ranks high as an asset. As an actor he 
had visited Washington repeatedly, and been 
impressed with the opportunity for a career 
which Congress offered a man who was will- 
ing to work hard and wait for his chance; so, 
first taking a turn in the California Legisla- 
ture by way of trying his hand, he announced 
himself a Republican candidate for Congress 
in a district which had previously been a 
Democratic stronghold, and carried it by a 
—163— 



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handsome plurality. This was in 1898, and 
since then he has been returned term after 
term, with one exception; even in the elec- 
tion immediately following the great fire, 
which wiped out four-fifths of his consti- 
tuency, he defeated his Democratic and So- 
cialist competitors by a clear majority of more 
than twenty-two hundred votes. 

Granting that Kahn is a politician and a 
pretty clever one, this fact alone would not 
account for his uninterrupted success. He 
usually contrives to be on the side to which 
his fellow partisans come, if not at once, at 
least on second thought; and, by being always 
patient and kindly towards those who do not 
agree with him at the outset, he wins over men 
who might have been confirmed in their op- 
position by a less tactful course. He is of 
only moderate height, stocky of build, with a 
round, full, jolly face and genial eyes. It is 
hard to imagine his ever having played tragic 
parts, for he has the face of a comedian as 
plainly labelled as that of the great Coquelin. 
Optimism, good nature, a cheerful readiness 
to take the world as he finds it and make the 
best of the bargain, are what one reads in a 
— 164 — 



Julius Kahn 



countenance which includes a mouth that 
turns up at the corners and a not too obtrusive 
double chin. In debate, his voice carries to 
every part of the hall, and, thanks to its early 
training, is under perfect command as to 
modulation and emphasis. He never badgers 
the speakers on the opposite side, and, when 
they show less consideration for him, gives 
their heckling so suave a reception as to im- 
press a listener with the notion that he is too 
assured of the soundness of his own logic to 
waste time in quarrelling over it. 

Kahn's espousal of the cause of the President 
when the latter was deserted by party friends 
who would naturally have been first expected 
to support him, was due not to any personal 
partiality for Mr. Wilson, but solely to patri- 
otism. He agreed with the President in be- 
lieving that selective conscription was the 
basis on which to build up the large army 
needed by the country at this juncture of af- 
fairs; and in the face of such a crisis all in- 
dividual likes and dislikes, and all partisan 
affiliations, were pushed aside as inconsider- 
able. Hardly was this measure out of the way 
when the espionage question came up, and on 
—165- 



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that Kahn was as staunchly opposed to the Ad- 
ministration as he had been favourable to its 
demand for conscription. His course gen- 
erally in the present session, following nearly 
twenty years of useful service, has carried him 
far on the road to party leadership. He is a 
man on whom the American public would do 
well to keep its eye, for he is still only fifty- 
six years old, whereas Mann is sixty-one and 
Cannon is on the superannuated list. 
Washington, July ig, igij. 



— 166— 



GENERAL HUGH L. SCOTT 

THE last American to welcome war with 
Germany or any other Power, but also 
the last to shirk his share of fighting 
or responsibility if war must come, is the pres- 
ent chief of stafif of the United States army. 
In civilians' attire and in a drawing-room, no 
one looks less like a priest of the sword than 
Hugh Lenox Scott. Two strangers in Wash- 
ington, at a social gathering, had singled him 
out from all the rest of the company, attracted 
by his modest but distinguished bearing and 
his scholarly face, and asked me who he was. 
Before answering, I gave each a guess at his 
calling. "I should set him down as a scien- 
tist," said one, "attached, perhaps, to the 
Smithsonian or the Carnegie Institute." "I'm 
not so sure about the science," said the other, 
"but I'll venture he's a college professor." 
"By lineage he is both," I replied, "and by his 
own right also, in a way; for he counts among 
his ancestors Benjamin Franklin and the fa- 
— 167 — 



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mous Dr. Charles Hodge, once president of 
Princeton College, while, for himself, he not 
only is the greatest living master of the In- 
dian sign language and an honorary L. H. D., 
but has filled the chief seat in an institution 
of learning as Superintendent of the West 
Point Military Academy." 

Three characteristics are printed on Gen. 
Scott's face: persistence, calmness, and so- 
briety of thought. You would almost as soon 
expect to see the Washington Monument walk 
off its base as to see the General flustered. 
This is not because he is devoid of emotion; 
he has an abundance of it, but it is so under 
his control that it never gets the better of him, 
even in the most trying moments. None but 
a long observer would suspect that he has any 
nerves; and his voice, which is deep-toned 
and capable of the sternest inflections of com- 
mand, is so unobtrusive in conversation that 
one has to pay pretty strict attention in order 
to catch all he says. These facts will explain 
in no small measure his wonderful influence 
over barbarous peoples wherever he has been 
brought into contact with them. Like the In- 
dians, he is never noisy, and makes little visible 
— 168— 



General Hugh L. Scott 



use of his lips in talking; and his countenance 
does not change its expression, whether he is 
communicating a friendly suggestion or warn- 
ing an adversary that his latest utterance must 
be accepted as an ultimatum, except that now 
and then it is crossed by a smile which for the 
moment is like a gleam of thin sunshine on 
an overcast day. The glistening spectacles 
through which he looks at his vis-a-vis tend 
to emphasize the generally serious cast of his 
face. 

It was a happy inspiration which prompted 
President Roosevelt to make Scott Governor 
of the Sulu Archipelago at the time when the 
local disaffection towards the United States 
was at its height and the Sultan was seiz- 
ing every opportunity to advertise his defiance 
of the white invaders. Scott had studied our 
Indians at close range for so many years, as 
their conqueror in war and their friend and 
confidant in peace, that he understood very 
well what problems were confronting him in 
dealing with another people who had reached 
about the same stage of social development. 
The only essential difference lay in the fact 
that all over our Indian frontier, among the 
— 169 — 



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tribes that had never seen him scarcely less 
than among those that had known him for a 
generation, his name was a household word, 
and the news that he was coming was the sig- 
nal for at least the outward composure of 
any disturbance that might be in progress; 
whereas in the Sulu Archipelago such prestige 
had still to be earned. He earned it — at the 
cost, to be sure, of losing several fingers which 
were of constant use to him in exemplifying 
the sign language, but so conclusively that, 
when he was called back to the United States, 
the fiercest of the Moro chiefs mourned like 
children over his departure; and if another 
outbreak were to occur in that quarter, no 
human being could be trusted to quell it by 
arms more effectively than he could by his 
mere personal presence. 

It was his peculiar mettle, doubtless, which 
Villa recognized when Scott was ordered to 
the Mexican border last year. One good look 
into the General's cool grey eyes and at his 
masterful jaw seemed to satisfy the guerrilla 
leader that at last he had met a soldier who 
would be more than his match should they 
ever come to a trial of strength. Frills and 
— 170 — 



General Hugh L. Scott 



bluster would have accomplished nothing 
with this half-civilized fellow; but to the 
quiet, unostentatious air of determination and 
self-confidence which he found enveloping 
Scott he was ready enough to respond with all 
the pledges demanded of him; and so long as 
he was the foremost figure on the southern side 
of the international line the omens of war dis- 
appeared behind the horizon. Since then we 
have begun to harvest a fresh crop of worries 
on both hemispheres; and it has become a 
matter of deep regret to many Americans that 
Scott, their chief apostle of friendly-fronted 
force, is an indivisible body, which cannot be 
in four or five places at once. 

Washington, August 12, 1913. 



—171— 



GENERAL J. FRANKLIN BELL 

THE first army officer of high rank to 
take formal cognizance of the necessity 
for adopting stringent military pre- 
cautions in this country was Gen. James 
Franklin Bell, who is to replace Gen. Leonard 
Wood at New York. His order to the sen- 
tries on guard at the fortifications adjacent to 
San Francisco, to shoot to kill any aviator dis- 
covered flying over these reservations, seems a 
stern one, but it is entirely in accord with his 
belief that it is better to nip trouble in the bud 
than to wait till it comes and then try to apply 
remedies. From the day he began his mili- 
tary career, it has been his unvarying rule to 
leave nothing to chance, but to settle all cur- 
rent business as it came along. In the army 
they have many stories to tell in illustration of 
his directness of method. One has it that 
when he was a young subaltern he discovered 
that, what with new uniforms and other orna- 
mental expenses forced upon him during a 
— 172 — 



General J. Franklin Bell 

rather trying period, there was likely to be a 
balance on the wrong side of his private ac- 
counts when he next footed them up. A 
popular man, with a good name for keeping 
his word, he was offered a half-dozen endorse- 
ments if he wished to have a note discounted 
at the bank; but he declined all these kindly 
overtures, and went at the business of recoup- 
ing in a manner quite unknown among his as- 
sociates when they were in similar plight. 
He had learned where he could buy a carload 
of potatoes at wholesale with a modest pay- 
ment down, and of a number of small towns 
where they could be sold in broken lots at a 
fair profit, so he obtained a leave of absence 
and went regularly into the business. By the 
date his leave expired he had enough cash in 
hand to head off the threatened deficit and 
make his mind easy for some time in the 
future. 

Another story told to show how little com- 
parative importance he attaches to outward 
forms when something worth while has to be 
done, describes him as having set out to de- 
liver a report on a certain essential matter to 
his superior officer, Gen. McArthur, and find- 
—173— 



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ing himself separated from his destination by 
a stretch of morass in which the mud was too 
soft to permit crossing on the surface and too 
stiff to permit swimming. It would have con- 
sumed precious time to go around the obstacle; 
he must get through it somehow. So without 
hesitancy he stripped ofif his own clothing and 
took everything from his horse that could ob- 
struct motion, and, bestriding the animal in 
this condition, forced it to ford the swamp 
with him_. When he reached the General's 
headquarters, the appearance of himself and 
his mount can be imagined. McArthur, who 
was uniformed in strict accordance with regu- 
lations, was dumfounded at the advent of such 
a looking messenger, and barely caught his 
breath in time to acknowledge the latter's 
salute; but Bell did not seem in the least em- 
barrassed, and postponed any explanations of 
his plight till he had duly delivered his 
report. 

The chief criticism made of Bell's military 
methods has to do with what many of his 
friends style his recklessness, but it is a theory 
of his that, as he can lay down his life only 
once at the utmost, he might as well sell it at 
—174— 



General J. Franklin Bell 

a good price as to give it away; and it must 
be said in defence of this view that such 
leadership not only spreads an infection of 
intrepidity among the troops, but soon arouses 
in the minds of a superstitious enemy the no- 
tion that the dare-devil chief bears a charmed 
life, and that it is practically useless to op- 
pose him. When, in the Philippines, the 
first discharge of volunteer soldiers occurred. 
Bell, who had already acquired a great reputa- 
tion for accomplishing whatever he set out to 
do, was authorized to oflfer re-enlistment to any 
of the men who cared to remain for further 
service, and to organize a regiment of these. 
His proposal was gladly accepted by some five 
hundred of the discharged contingent, and, as 
the exploits of the new regiment were noised 
about, a significant nickname was attached to 
it at headquarters — "Bell's Suicide Club." 
It was on a foray made by his "club," if I 
remember aright, that he invented a new 
weapon. He was hot-footed after a Filipino 
officer whom he was bound to capture, when 
his ammunition gave out. There was no time 
to waste on an effort to replenish, for he was 
almost on top of his quarry; so, still riding 

—175— 



National Miniatures 



at full gallop, he contrived to unbuckle one 
of his stirrups and, seizing it by the end of 
the strap, he swung it around his head like a 
huge slungshot, and with this and the use of 
a leatherlike pair of lungs threw his enemy 
into a spasm of terror and took him prisoner. 
It was a number of like performances, in- 
cluding one in which, with only a handful of 
companions, he charged a body of a hundred 
Filipinos, drove them to flight, and single- 
handed captured a captain and two privates 
by sheer dash after he had fired the last car- 
tridge in his revolver, that won his then un- 
exampled promotion from a captaincy to a 
brigadier-generalship in the regular army, 
over the heads of more than one thousand offi- 
cers who stood before him on the army list. 

Bell is a stalwart man physically, with a 
genial face and manner, a modest deportment, 
and a readiness to "talk over" debatable points 
which gives him a marked advantage in any 
peaceful controversy. But when it comes to 
real war, he could give even Ethan Allen 
points on diligence. It is a maxim with him 
that an army has no business with intrenching 
tools. Rifles, not spades, he declares, are the 
— 176- — 



General J. Franklin Bell 

suitable equipment for soldiers, for as soon as 
an army settles down in intrenchments the 
enemy recognizes it as a signal for getting 
ready to attack, whereas the secret of success 
in fighting is to keep the other fellows on the 
run. Bell is now about sixty-one years old, 
but with a lot of good blood in him still, and, 
though he may not be able to take the field in 
his old style, his counsel will be sought in any 
coming emergency. It is safe to prophesy that 
he will always be found on the side of those 
who believe that the best way to end a war is 
to push it to a finish without a let-up, even if 
it does work some hardships — a peace pro- 
cured by such compulsion being cheaper in 
the end than a long-drawn endeavour to give 
an aspect of gentleness to what is essentially 
ungentle and hideous. 

Washington, March zg, igij. 



•177— 



REAR-ADMIRAL PEARY 

ROBERT EDWIN PEARY, Rear- 
Admiral retired, U. S. N., must have 
been reminded often, during the fight 
made against the promotion of Grayson, of the 
opposition encountered by himself before he 
was legislated into his present rank. In his 
case the objection was not that he had done 
nothing entitling him to special distinction — 
for that could hardly be charged against the 
discoverer of the North Pole — but that his 
achievements were not technically naval. It 
was argued that if we began making generals 
and admirals of men who merely had done 
something big for science or commerce, there 
was no telling what extremes the habit might 
reach. Since we had no other means of sub- 
stantially recognizing merit of Peary's par- 
ticular sort, however, his bill went through; 
and now the question is asked, what titular re- 
ward would be appropriate if he should make 
a brilliant success, in some not impossible 
-178- 



Rear- Admiral Peary 



emergency, of his project for a coast patrol of 
aircraft? 

Were the adoption of Peary's plan depend- 
ent on his personal influence with Congress, it 
is difficult to guess how it would fare. With 
all his gift for sticking to an idea, he has never 
learned the art of hypnotizing other men. 
His absorption in the thought that controls 
him, and his belief in not saying much about 
what he is going to do, even to the men to 
whom he must look for co-operation or obedi- 
ence while doing it, have cost him some friend- 
ships which a more diplomatic man might 
have captured. Although the lieutenants in 
his undertakings who have stood closest to him 
have been loyal and even enthusiastic, a good 
deal of grumbling and criticism have come 
from the underlings. Nor has his blunt way 
of speaking his mind won him favour in high 
official quarters. Bryan, not long before leav- 
ing the State Department, fell vigorously 
afoul of him, denouncing as "little less than a 
crime" his prediction that within the next 
hundred years the United States would have 
to occupy all of North America or submit to 
obliteration. Peary ignored the censure ex- 
—179— 



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cept to remark that he had first uttered that 
prophecy twelve years before, in a public ad- 
dress delivered in the city of London — the 
peaceful reception of it seeming to indicate 
that our British cousins were not deeply 
agitated over the prospect of losing Canada. 

Peary has been noted all his life for saying 
and doing unexpected things. For years after 
he had begun taking an interest in Arctic 
topics, nobody suspected him of having de- 
signs on the Pole. Other would-be explorers 
had loudly advertised their purpose, seeking 
thus to attract the support of men of means. 
Peary had neither money nor powerful friends 
at the start: he was simply one of many un- 
known young fellows employed in the engi- 
neering branch of the navy. But it leaked out 
once that he was puzzling over the question 
of what was at the upper end of Greenland, 
beyond where its coast lines disappeared into 
nothingness at the top of the maps of that day; 
and a little club in Brooklyn, happening to 
hear of this, invited him to come and talk to 
them about it. They could not afiford to pay 
in cash for his time and trouble, but they ar- 
ranged to have his talk well reported in a lo- 
— 1 80 — 



Rear- Admiral Peary 



cal newspaper, and the article caught the at- 
tention of a large and well-to-do scientific so- 
ciety which raised the funds needed to send 
him to Greenland to solve his riddle on the 
spot. Further trips followed in due course, 
and presently came forth an expression of his 
desire to try for the Pole. How he succeeded, 
after repeated bafflements and at least two 
painful bodily injuries, is a matter of common 
knowledge. What is not so generally under- 
stood is that the accomplishment which finally 
crowned his career was due to no special 
genius, but to the fact that at every stage his 
work was mapped out in advance with mathe- 
matical clearness of detail and carried through 
as planned, leaving practically nothing to 
speculation. 

In appearance, Peary is not the picturesque 
hero of romance. He is lean to a marked de- 
gree and fairly brick-coloured from years of 
exposure to the arctic sun and cold together. 
His movements are in no wise graceful, and 
his manners are sometimes a trifle brusque. 
His eyes are his best feature: they are of so 
deep a blue as to be almost fiery, and present 
a striking contrast with his reddish hair and 
— i8i— 



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moustache. His effect in its entirety is that 
of a man who lives out-of-doors and on whom 
the adverse forces of nature, from icy winds 
to bears' teeth, could make but a feeble im- 
pression. Entertaining traditions cling about 
Fryeburg, Maine, his mother's home, where 
he spent much time in his youth, illustrative 
of his indifference to physical discomforts. 
He was walking over a country road one 
frigid November day when he met a neigh- 
bour carrying a gun but no game. "I saw a 
flock of ducks about two miles back," the man 
explained, "but they were in an open hole in 
the middle of a frozen pond, and I had no 
dog, so I let them go." 

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Peary, "show me the 
place." 

Arrived at the pond, there were the birds. 
The hunter fired and killed two. Peary 
stripped, broke the thin ice near the shore 
with a fence-rail, swam out and recovered the 
birds, all with as little ado as if the season 
had been midsummer. 

The good people of the town used to point 
with pride to two stones, set upright in a va- 
cant lot by Peary soon after he had been gradu- 
—182— 



Rear- Admiral Peary 



ated from Bowdoin and had begun business 
as a surveyor; he had used them in establish- 
ing the meridian line — a conscientious process 
which involved his spending many a long, cold 
winter night working in the open, to take ob- 
servations of the North Star. It would be 
hard to get the better of a resolution like that. 
Washington, April 5, 1Q17. 



-183- 



REAR-ADMIRAL GOODRICH 

CONFRONTED by a troublesome sit- 
uation, most of us have a way of turn- 
ing our thoughts back, with an inter- 
est perhaps more sentimental than substantial, 
to "what might have been." Doubtless the 
fact that, in spite of all efforts to keep it 
out, this nation has finally been drawn into 
the world war, has revived in the mind of 
Rear-Admiral Caspar Frederick Goodrich 
some reflections on how his scheme for con- 
serving international peace, even at the cost 
of fighting for it, would have affected pres- 
ent conditions if it could have been applied 
in time. It was a dream of his from youth 
that the two great English-speaking nations 
might, by entering into a sort of police part- 
nership, force their bellicose neighbours to 
behave themselves like sharers in a modern 
civilization and submit their differences to 
arbitration. Reduced to its simplest terms, 
his idea was that, when this twain saw other 
—184— 



Rear- Admiral Goodrich 



nations preparing to go to war, they were to 
step in and advise the peaceful means of settle- 
ment; and if one party rejected their overtures 
and insisted on fighting, Great Britain and the 
United States were to join forces with its ad- 
versaries and help pummel it into a proper 
respect for good manners. In view of his ad- 
vocacy of a plan of this sort, it is worthy of 
note that Goodrich, several years before the 
latest outbreak of carnage in Europe, called 
public attention to the fact that Germany, 
though not having England's geographical or 
commercial excuse for keeping up a big navy, 
had raised hers to a strength only second to 
England's. To him this seemed significant, 
and in the light of more recent events we all 
are able to recognize its sinister portent; and 
what would have happened if the bulk of the 
German navy had been permitted to get out 
and play on the high seas the part its builders 
unquestionably had in view for it, we can but 
conjecture. 

The war now in progress exposes, of course, 

one weakness in the Goodrich program, 

namely, the difficulty of making it work in a 

case where there is no specific ground of dis- 

—185— 



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pute between two nations, but where a pretext 
for a collision is suddenly manufactured by 
one that has been spoiling for the chance, and 
a quick succession of events, linked by the in- 
terplay of treaties and guarantees among a 
considerable group of Governments, plunges 
almost an entire continent into bloodshed 
without warning. It must not be assumed 
from this misfit, any more than from his 
original conception of a self-constituted in- 
ternational police, that Goodrich is a vision- 
ary person. On the contrary, no officer of 
the navy has better earned a reputation for 
well-balanced plans and business-like meth- 
ods. It was to him that the navy owed its 
relief, during the brief but efficient admin- 
istration of Secretary Newberry, from the 
burdensome bureaucratic system under which 
the shore stations became breeding-nests of 
patronage, where waste of public money was 
going on at an appalling rate and discipline 
was demoralized by the diffusion of authority. 
In every navy yard there were as many sepa- 
rate plants of one kind as there were bureaus 
using such plants. The Bureau of Yards and 
Docks, for instance, would have one machine 
— 186— 



Rear-Admiral Goodrich 



shop, the Bureau of Construction and Repair 
another, the Bureau of Ordnance a third, and 
so on through the list — all the shops doing, or 
being capable of doing, substantially the same 
thing, but under separate bosses and directed 
by separate heads in Washington. This nec- 
essarily meant duplication of much of the 
work, a large increase of cost in needless over- 
head expenses, and the accumulation in the 
storehouse attached to one shop of a lot of ma- 
terial that could not be used for the present, 
while some other shop might be hard at work, 
night and day, making the same kind of things 
for itself to supply a deficiency. 

A private business run on so senseless a 
plan would have invited bankruptcy in short 
order; but the system had been the growth of 
years, taking its rise in internal bureaucratic 
rivalries and jealousies, and remaining opera- 
tive not because any one could have offered a 
reasonable excuse for it, but because, every 
time there seemed a possibility of its being dis- 
turbed, some Congressman who was "taking 
care of" a henchman in one of the superfluous 
foremanships would prance up to the Navy 
Department and turn the air blue with 
—187— 



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denunciations of the threatened interference 
with his share of the spoils of office. New- 
berry, fortunately, was built with a backbone 
and could listen to these rantings without 
trembling. He sent Goodrich out to make the 
round of the shore stations and do the job 
which both of them recognized as essential to 
save the service from dry rot, and Goodrich 
did it. He laid his axe to the red-tape used in 
office methods as well as to the excrescences on 
plants and rosters, so that it should no longer 
be necessary for a commandant at a yard to 
spend his time signing hundreds of formal 
papers with his own hand which could be 
signed by subordinates just as well or dis- 
pensed with altogether, or to keep five shops 
running where one would answer all pur- 
poses, or to compose conflicts between the un- 
der-lords of various bureaus, or to delay the 
payment of contractors' accounts so that the 
Government had to pay more for everything 
it ordered than a private concern making cor- 
responding purchases; and he put the work- 
men upon a competitive basis for retention and 
promotion, which eliminated the element of 
vicious favouritism as far as was humanly pos- 
—188— 



Rear-Admiral Goodrich 



sible under the circumstances. Not all these 
improvements have been retained intact under 
later Administrations, but the changes made 
by Newberry during his few months' tenure 
were so radical that it would take about as 
much hard work for any successor to restore 
the whole evil system as was originally spent 
on building it up; and if Goodrich had noth- 
ing else to his credit for the nearly fifty years 
of his active connection with the naval serv- 
ice, his work as a chopper and pruner would 
suffice for a record. 

The Admiral, who has been on the retired 
list since early in 1909, is now seventy years 
old. He has put in some of his leisure in writ- 
ing for the magazines, which he does very 
well, and has not confined himself by any 
means to professional topics. With his busi- 
ness acumen and his versatility, he ought to 
have his share in our naval councils during the 
present war. 

Washington, May 17, IQ17. 



—189— 



WILLIAM H. TAFT 

FIVE Federal judges — two of them, I 
believe, appointees of President Taft 
— chanced the other day to meet at a 
friend's house, where the conversation turned 
upon Mr. Taft's present activities. They 
were unanimous in their opinion of the value 
of the service he was doing the country by his 
temperate public discussion of current history 
from the point of view of one who had recently 
had much to do with making it. Then one of 
the party threw out the query: "If he is so 
competent to advise others, how came he to 
make no better showing for himself?" The 
rest shrank slightly from putting into words 
the thought that was in their minds, till one 
drew forth a chorus of assent by remarking: 
''He had too judicial a mind." And forth- 
with followed a round of stories of the ex- 
President which, if told of any ordinary citi- 
zen, would have been accepted as evidence of 
his insincerity of character, but which a psy- 
— 190 — 



William H. Taft 



chologist would construe as a sign of an abnor- 
mal terror of making a mistake — a trait which 
causes so many good men to come to ground 
between two stools. 

The weakness is an amiable one, doubtless, 
but it has cost Taft more friends than all his 
other amiable traits have won for him. Hu- 
man nature is so constituted that the man of 
honest purpose who goes ahead, doing his best 
for the hour, but leaving Providence to look 
out for the loose ends, will bind his fellows to 
him by stronger ties, regardless of his many 
blunders, than he who never finishes weighing 
the two sides of any question. Probably down 
at the root of the difference lies the fact that 
lack of self-confidence begets mistrust in 
others. Graduating from the bench into the 
executive field, Taft carried his judicial habit 
so far that no one dared accept as final the 
decisions he had reached at bedtime, lest he 
should change his mind before the next day- 
break. A judge, it may be, could afford to 
shift position in this way, because it is part 
of his duty and training to keep his con- 
clusions to himself till the time arrives for 
their oflicial promulgation; but Taft, after he 
—191— 



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had thrown ofif the conventional restraints of 
the bench, acquired a bad habit of thinking 
aloud, as it were ; and a frankness which under 
other conditions might have been regarded as 
a positive virtue became almost a vice in a 
President who, with so enormous responsi- 
bilities resting on him, would let it be known 
today that he had settled upon one plan or 
policy, only to reverse himself completely to- 
morrow, even though the overnight change 
were the fruit of more mature deliberation. 

Another and very serious shortcoming in 
Taft as President, having its source in his 
judicial experience, was his tendency to sud- 
den and impulsive retorts upon whoever hap- 
pened to ofifend him. Here was the arbitrary 
power of the judge to punish contempt, ex- 
ercised far away from the courtroom. He 
could not throw the offenders into jail, per- 
haps, but he could pass a summary moral 
judgment upon them without giving them 
a chance to correct his misunderstandings. 
The sort of candour he was so proud of visit- 
ing upon others he could not brook when 
turned upon himself, and his sensitiveness was 
so keen that he would imagine an adverse 
— 192 — 



William H. Taft 



criticism where none had been made or in- 
tended. 

Now, however, the situation is once more 
altered. Taft is neither held in restraint by 
the traditions of a court nor impelled to an 
unwonted promptness of decision by the pres- 
sure of an administrative routine. He has no 
personal following to insist, as Grant's did 
in 1880, on his shaping his words and conduct 
with a view to re-election, nor is he faced with 
a national financial or economic crisis which 
can be met by his party only under his direct 
leadership, as was Cleveland in 1892. The 
constant demand upon him for addresses to 
be delivered to one or another body of his 
fellow citizens afifords a natural and unob- 
trusive outlet for any of his opinions on public 
affairs which he thinks might fit the needs 
of the moment, and the independence of his 
position before the country is a sufficient 
guarantee that these opinions are not tinctured 
by any ulterior motive. In spite of a few 
strong native likes and dislikes, Taft's de- 
tached judgments are apt to be fair and sane; 
and their forms of expression are pretty care- 
fully thought out nowadays, for the lesson of 

—193— 



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the Winona speech, dictated to a stenographer 
between stations on a railway journey, has left 
too deep an impress on his memory to permit 
of his ever falling into that particular error of 
carelessness again. 

In Taft's example we may read the best 
possible answer to the once haunting question: 
"What shall we do with our ex-Presidents?" 
The younger Adams answered it in his way 
by coming to Congress and helping to make 
laws for his successors to execute; the old 
Virginia triumvirate lent much time and 
thought in their retirement to the upbuilding 
of the institutions of their State; the Harrison 
of our generation resumed his law practice, 
and pleaded his country's cause successfully 
before an international tribunal; Hayes re- 
newed his early associations as a friend among 
friends. Taft has effected a rather clever 
combination of private and public employ- 
ment. His professorship at Yale brings him 
into close touch with the rising generation, the 
trend of whose thought he can influence for 
reasonableness; while his ready response to 
calls from all over the Union, for occasions 
which will assure him a large audience on the 
— 194 — 



William H, Taft 



spot and a yet larger one through the press, 
enables him to interpret for the American 
people many of the political and social omens 
of the day, the full significance of which 
might otherwise be overlooked or misap- 
prehended. 

Washington, December 30, igiS- 



—195— 



HARRY A. GARFIELD 

THE old saw which represents great 
men's sons as usually small enough to 
strike a moderate average has no ap- 
plication to the Garfield family, which pro- 
duced in one generation a President of the 
United States and in the next at least two men 
of deserved eminence. But President Gar- 
field had for a wife a woman of exceptional 
force and energy, with a wonderful capacity 
for coping with sudden exigencies — one of the 
sort we read about in stories of pioneer life, 
but rarely meet. The "Garfield boys," as 
they are still called in spite of their having 
turned the half-century post, resemble both 
father and mother. From the father they in- 
herit an attractive personality, a tactful ad- 
dress, and the gift of ready speech; from the 
mother a combination of firmness of resolve 
with external gentleness and self-control. 

Harry Augustus is the eldest of a consider- 
able family group. He was born too late to 
— 196 — 



Harry A. Garfield 



recall his father as a soldier, but much of his 
childhood was passed in Washington, where 
the Garfields made their home during the ses- 
sions of Congress in a modest dwelling on the 
edge of Franklin Square, which has since been 
turned into an apartment house. Across the 
Square stood a private school famous in those 
days and later as a place for preparing boys 
for college. It was kept by a quaint scholar 
named Young, who took great pride in his 
personal resemblance to James G. Blaine and 
who loved to entertain visitors at his desk by 
pointing out among the pupils facing him the 
sons of Secretary This, and of Senator That, 
and of Representative So-and-So. To this 
school Harry was sent, and it is to his credit 
that, as his father advanced in public impor- 
tance, the lad did not succumb, like some of 
his companions, to the influence of the atmos- 
phere of vicarious greatness which surrounded 
him. As soon as he was prepared for college 
he entered Williams, where his father had 
been graduated twenty-five years before. 

The President's assassination occurred the 
same summer, leaving this eighteen-year-old 
freshman to share with his mother the respon- 
—197— 



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sibility of heading their household in the 
shadow of a terrible tragedy. Following in 
the footsteps of his father, Harry adopted the 
law as a basic profession, though his strong 
bent was towards politics and sociology. He 
liked people, and the things that have to do 
with human rather than purely material in- 
terests. He began practice in Cleveland, 
but was soon immersed in the task of clean- 
ing the dark and dirty corners of the mu- 
nicipal government, and was rewarded by wit- 
nessing the success of a reform movement 
under his leadership which drove into exile 
a notorious gang of "boodlers" who had been 
running the affairs of the city to their own en- 
richment and the damage of the respectable 
element in the community. As a lawyer and 
business man, meanwhile, he was pushing the 
upbuilding of transportation lines and bank- 
ing concerns in the neighbourhood, and put- 
ting in his few odd hours as a lecturer in the 
Western Reserve Law School; and as writer 
and speaker in the nation at large he made 
vigorous efforts towards the improvement of 
our consular system and the civil service in 
general. 

—198— 



Harry A. Garfield 



It was in the midst of these activities that 
Princeton University found him in 1903, when 
it was looking for some one to take the place 
of the professor of jurisprudence and politics 
who had just resigned. Woodrow Wilson, 
who had lately filled the same chair, had left it 
to become president of the University. Their 
community of tastes led the two men into 
pretty intimate companionship, and thus paved 
the way for the appointment of Garfield — who 
in the interval had been called to the presi- 
dency of Williams — as Fuel Administrator 
through the crisis brought about by the coun- 
try's entrance into the world war. The choice 
of him for a post that is bound to have, for a 
time at least, a savour of unpopularity, reflects 
credit upon President Wilson's discernment; 
for the new Administrator possesses the same 
faculty which was so conspicuous among the 
political assets of his father, for "getting on" 
with people. His determination as to the 
course he is to pursue is as definite as his 
mother's always was and still remains in spite 
of her eighty-five years; but his way of meet- 
ing opposition wears it gradually away, and 
an adversary who enters the lists against him 
—199— 



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resolved not to yield an inch may before long 
be presenting him with an ell, not as a token 
of surrender, but with a sense of offering a 
wholly voluntary contribution to a worthy 
cause. In handling the coal industry, so de- 
pendent on a harmonious relation between em- 
ployers and employed in the mining fields, a 
talent of this sort is a fortune in itself. What 
Garfield accomplished as a college president, 
winning over the bulk of the student body to 
his support notwithstanding the antagonisms 
he had aroused at the outset by sundry new re- 
strictive measures, he bids fair to accomplish 
in his dealings with the mine-owners and their 
workmen, if we may judge by the present atti- 
tude of certain men in authority among the 
knights of the pick. 

Garfield has the large head, the expansive 
brow and fresh tinted complexion of his father, 
with the full, dark, poetic eyes of a dreamer, 
but the mouth and chin of a man of action. 
He is a natural orator, not of the spread-eagle 
variety, but with a ready command of the 
phrases best calculated to convey his meaning 
clearly, and a happy sense of proportion and 
perspective in the arrangement of his argu- 
— 200 — 



Harry A. Garfield 



mentative points. A youthful fondness for 
football trained him to the appreciation of in- 
telligent team-play, and he finds far greater 
satisfaction in a success won by co-operative 
work than in any mere personal triumph over 
threatening odds. Nearly every one who does 
not know the man is disposed to resent the un- 
dignified familiarity of the newspapers in re- 
ferring always to "Harry" Garfield. There 
is in this no cause of ofifence, however, for 
Harry is the name with which he was chris- 
tened: it might have cost him half his avail- 
ability for such posts as he has filled to have 
been loaded with the formal "Henry." 
Washington, November 8, igij. 



-20I- 



ANDREW D. WHITE 

ONE American to whom the recent 
trend of affairs in Europe must have 
brought especial distress is Dr. An- 
drew Dickson White, perhaps the most distin- 
guished example of the scholar in politics 
our country produced during his generation. 
Fortunately, a man of eighty-three can bear 
these things with more philosophy than one of 
half that age. Dr. White not only received 
part of his higher education at Oxford, Paris, 
St. Petersburg and Berlin, but he has twice 
served us in a diplomatic capacity at the 
Russian court — once as attache and once as 
Minister — and has been at various times our 
Minister and our Ambassador to Germany. 
Thus he has been brought into relations of 
unusual intimacy with the governments of 
two of the great Continental Powers arrayed 
against one another in the present war. His 
service in Germany was most noteworthy, for 
he saw that country first under the elder Wil- 
— 202 — 



^Andrew D. White 



helm and his faithful Bismarck, and the sec- 
ond time after the reigning Kaiser had been 
nine years on the throne. 

The changes which had occurred in the in- 
terval were almost inconceivable. The army 
which, under Wilhelm I, was merely an effi- 
cient instrument of force reserved for use in 
offensive and defensive emergencies, had be- 
come, under the old man's grandson, the mas- 
ter of the German people. Everything else 
was made to bow down before it. The youth 
of the empire were educated with reference 
to one day taking their places in it. The 
military code, economic and ethical, was 
everywhere dominant. The whole social 
structure had been remodelled on straight lines 
and right angles, and woe to him who should 
try a diagonal short-cut without authority 
from above. In another important respect the 
new Germany was unlike the old: that was, 
in its attitude towards things American. The 
sense of friendliness which had made German 
Day almost as much of a festival in the United 
States as in the Fatherland seemed to have 
been forgotten, and in its place Dr. White 
faced a thinly veiled and plainly contemptuous 
—203— 



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hostility. The war for Cuban independence 
was brewing when he reached his Ambassa- 
dorial post, and broke out soon afterwards; 
and the military magnates and the lizard press 
of Berlin vied with each other in sneering 
intimations of our inability to cope with Spain. 
Here was the supreme test of self-restraint 
for a proud man and a good patriot; but Dr. 
White overcame a thousand temptations to 
retort, and so bore himself that, after the 
Cuban war had ended in a complete triumph 
for our arms, he stayed on for four years 
more, intrenching himself firmly in the re- 
spect of the cultivated class of Germans and 
receiving marked honours from the Kaiser, 
who presented him, at parting, with the gold 
medal of the Empire of Science and Art, 
which is conferred annually upon the one per- 
son in the world whom the German Govern- 
ment deems worthiest of it. The next year 
Dr. White represented the United States at 
the Hague Conference, and took part in de- 
liberations designed to do away, all over the 
earth, with the militaristic ideals which Wil- 
helm H was trying to fasten upon Germany, 
and was chiefly instrumental in persuading 
— 204 — 



'Andrew D. White 



Andrew Carnegie to build the International 
Peace Palace. 

Though Dr. White, like his fellow scholar 
President Wilson, has devoted the study of a 
life-time to history and political science, he 
has not ignored the natural sciences, the fine 
arts, literature, or religion, for all these ele- 
ments, he will tell you, enter largely into the 
composition of history in its broader sense. 
He has added, also, a valuable contribution of 
personal activity in the politics of his own 
country. He attended the Republican Na- 
tional Convention of 1864 which renominated 
Lincoln, and that of 1872 which performed 
the same office for Grant, and took a conspicu- 
ous part in that of 1884, where he was among 
the small group of delegates who strove to 
prevent the nomination of Blaine, but sup- 
ported him in the campaign in deference to 
the expressed will of their party. Neither 
has he been above taking his own chances at 
the polls as a candidate, and one of these ad- 
ventures bore fruit in the great success of his 
career; for his election to the New York State 
Senate brought him into close contact with 
Ezra Cornell, the millionaire land-owner, 

— 205 — 



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who listened sympathetically to his plea for 
the foundation of a university in the interior 
of the State on a basis so liberal that any boy 
who craved an education could obtain one 
there, no matter how poor or friendless he 
might be. Cornell's consent was conditioned 
upon White's promise to take charge of the in- 
stitution; and it was the first president's man- 
ner of handling his task, coupled with a timely 
addition to its endowment from his private 
purse, which gave Cornell University its initial 
momentum towards the position it has since 
attained, carrying his name with it in its train 
of fame. 

In everything except inches and avoirdu- 
pois. Dr. White looks his part. He is a small 
man, but his whitened hair and beard and 
his unemotional eyes stamp him as one who 
has lived long in the world and profited by 
his observation of it. His quiet habit and his 
somewhat precise manner of speaking, with a 
glint of humour showing through it here and 
there, give an impressive effect to whatever 
he has to say. It is related that he broke up 
a projected rebellion at Cornell University by 
calmly reminding the ringleaders that the 
— 206 — 



^Andrew D. White 



University would be richer if every student 
quitted it and its funds were placed at interest 
instead of being spent upon them; so he urged 
all who were of their way of thinking to leave 
at once. That was the end of the folly. The 
little man who knew what he was about had 
conquered the big body whose chief weapon 
was bluster. 

Washington, January 6, igid. 



— 207 — 



BRAND WHITLOCK 

NOT of his own volition, but in obedi- 
ence to direct orders from Wash- 
ington, Brand Whitlock finally left 
Brussels. Like Ambassador Herrick, who 
stayed in Paris to help the distressed and em- 
barrassed after the Government and the lega- 
tions had gone to more comfortable quarters 
in Bordeaux, Minister Whitlock felt that he 
could be of larger usefulness at his old post 
than at Havre, whither the rest of the diplo- 
matic corps had betaken themselves with the 
Court. This was the human, as distinguished 
from the official, view of a representative of 
the greatest of the neutral governments, and 
its effect in keeping up the courage of the 
Belgian people under the tyrannical rule of 
their temporary masters has been not less 
marked than its stimulation of the pride and 
confidence of his own countrymen, and its ex- 
posure, by contrast, of the barbarism mas- 
querading under the guise of Kultur. 
— 208 — 



Brand IF hit lock 



A lawyer by virtue of admission to the bar, 
but a newspaper and literary worker by in- 
stinct and choice, Whitlock long ago learned 
the unwisdom of exuberance. In a sense he 
is an enthusiast, throwing his heart into what- 
ever employs his mind and his hand; but he 
keeps his energies well stored for use when 
something of importance calls for inspiration, 
instead of letting them out spasmodically 
through the safety-valve of speech. An in- 
stance in point was when the political factions 
in Belgium plunged into a controversy over 
the methods to be followed in distributing the 
food supplies sent into the country by outside 
sympathizers. Several million hungry Bel- 
gians were to be helped, and there were only 
a handful of qualified persons to do the work, 
so the situation did present a good deal of a 
problem. A conference between the squab- 
bling factions was in full swing, and leaders 
on both sides were struggling to harangue the 
rest, when the Amercian Minister, who had 
been invited to the meeting as a matter of 
courtesy, appeared. As the most eminent per- 
sonage in the hall, the declaimers waived their 
right to be heard in order to make it possible 
— 209 — 



National Miniatures 



for him to deliver an address. His refusal to 
do so, on the modest plea that he had come 
there not to talk, but to lend a hand in any 
way he could help, was more eloquent than the 
most elaborate oration he could have put to- 
gether. It silenced the wrangle and set the 
whole party to figuring on what they could do 
in the shortest order rather than on who should 
reap the credit for their common achievement. 
Such things were a constant marvel to the 
Belgians, accustomed to the ceremonial at- 
mosphere enveloping everything official in 
Europe. His brief declaration, when he 
found the urgent relief work impeded by a 
technical debate over who was responsible, 
under the Hague conventions, for the care of 
the sufferers in a situation like the one exist- 
ing, "Starving people can't eat Hague conven- 
tions," chopped the Gordian knot through the 
middle and gave the contestants a fresh phase 
of the subject to talk about. Equally direct 
was his settlement of a question brought to 
his notice by a high judicial dignitary of Bel- 
gium in the early days of the war. The Court 
was still in Brussels, and the German Govern- 
ment had turned over the handling of its local 

2IO — 



Brand Whitlock 



afifairs to Whitlock as a neutral diplomatist. 
The solemn judge called upon him one morn- 
ing to say that certain suspicious circum- 
stances had led to the belief that the chimney 
of the German Legation building concealed a 
wireless telegraph apparatus with which spies 
were keeping the invaders informed of events 
in the city. "I have the honour to suggest," 
he continued, "that your Excellency unite with 
me in the appointment of a commission of in- 
vestigation, authorized to summon witnesses, 
take testimony, and render a report on the 
matter." 

"Couldn't we get at the facts sooner," re- 
sponded Whitlock, "by going up ourselves and 
looking down the chimney?" 

The prompt assent which greeted his in- 
quiry astonished the Minister as much as the 
informality of the proposal had astonished the 
judge. Up they climbed to the roof together, 
peered down the chimney, and found — a 
swivelled wind-guard which, having gone too 
long unoiled, gave forth mysterious squeaks 
and creaks whenever a passing breeze swung 
it around on its axis. 

Albeit Whitlock has spent several years, 

— 211 — 



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first and last, in public life, he never sought 
oflice in the politician's way. While living 
as a young man in Chicago he declined posi- 
tions offered him by Governor Altgeld, whose 
unpopular cause he had championed. But in 
Toledo, where he afterward made his home, 
he became so close a friend and disciple of 
Samuel Jones, the "Golden Rule" Mayor, as 
to be elected to succeed him and carry forward 
his policies. Whitlock, however, longed to 
divest himself of the petty cares of office and 
find some leisure for writing; so after four 
terms as Mayor he declined another, and 
President Wilson, as a man of letters ambitious 
to fill our foreign service with members of 
his own craft, chose him for the Belgian Mis- 
sion. He was scarely more than settled at this 
post before the world war broke out, and he 
found himself in the very thick of the trouble. 
Again and again, German subjects who were 
in danger of death at the hands of outraged 
Belgians sought his protection and were kept 
in safety under the roof of his Legation; and 
when the German army had advanced upon 
Brussels and the Court had removed to 
France, it was he who persuaded the Burgo- 

212 — 



Brand Whttlock 



master not to offer any armed resistance, and 
the beautiful capital was thus spared the fate 
of some less prudent cities ; yet when he joined 
in the protest against the killing of Edith Ca- 
vell, he was as powerless as his colleagues to 
divert the Prussian thirst for blood. 

The reputation he had gained for courage 
and resourcefulness, quite as much as their 
desire to maintain relations of outward friend- 
liness with this country, moved a number of 
foreign governments to commit their interests 
to his keeping for the period of the war. At 
one time he had eight such trusts to administer, 
representing simultaneously Germany, Aus- 
tria, Great Britain, Japan, Servia, Denmark, 
and the principality of Liechtenstein, as well 
as the United States. It involved an almost 
unendurable nervous strain for the bearer of 
these responsibilities to stay at his post and 
witness the reign of horrors all about him. 
He hates war; he loves humanity for its own 
sake; yet he is no spineless pacifist, and has 
always refused to adopt socialism because 
it "provides for everything in the world ex- 
cept liberty." He also cherishes a wholesome 
antipathy for the "reformer" who insists that 
—213— 



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other people shall be forced — by the police 
power, if necessary — to conform their lives to 
his particular ideals. 

Whitlock's war vigil in Brussels has aged 
him more than thrice the same number of 
years would have if passed in a peaceful en- 
vironment. His eyes are as large and full and 
his expression as intense as of old; he is still 
youthful in build, though counting forty-eight 
years by the calendar; but deep lines have 
come here and there into his once softly 
rounded face, and a suggestion of gauntness 
about the jaws conveys the impression of a 
long subjection to anxiety and a determination 
to emulate Mr. Britling and ''see it through." 
Washington, July 5, igij. 



—214- 



HENRY VAN DYKE 

THE Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, who 
recently resigned his office as Min- 
ister to Holland, will never figure in 
history as a great diplomatist, for much the 
same reason that he will never figure as a great 
ecclesiastical leader: he likes too well to obey 
his human impulses, regardless of artificial 
restraints. Though technically a neutral of 
the neutrals while representing his govern- 
ment at a foreign court, barely had he got be- 
yond gunshot of The Hague before he burst 
into song in glorification of France, and with 
a fervour which showed where his heart had 
really been through the two years and more 
when the code of international etiquette im- 
posed upon him an irksome silence. The 
episode recalls his experience long ago in the 
church, where, as a good Presbyterian by de- 
scent and education, he had adopted for a life 
calling the instruction of other men in the faith 
of his fathers. In those days the church 
—215— 



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had almost as much respect for an avowed in- 
fidel as for a member who questioned the 
literal inerrancy of the Bible, and its moral 
ban was laid upon all such levities as dancing 
and theatregoing. Van Dyke, who believed 
that one need not be any the worse religionist 
for being also a man of the world in the 
broader sense, did not leave the fold in order 
to exercise freedom of conscience for himself 
and demand it for others, but undertook to 
procure the desired reforms from the inside. 
His liberal tendencies had begun to manifest 
themselves while he was a student in Prince- 
ton College in the early seventies and took 
part in the undergraduate gaieties which he 
has commemorated in his "Triangle Song," 
still roared forth with gusto by old Princeton- 
ians to the tune of "Marching Through 
Georgia"; a single stanza will suffice to indi- 
cate what he was up to as a lad : 

Well the old Triangle knew the music of our tread, 
How the peaceful Seminole would tremble in his bed ! 
How the gates were left unhinged, the lamps without a 
head, 
While we were marching through Princeton! 

In the theological seminary he appears to 
— 216 — 



Henry Van Dyke 



have retained his fondness for unhinging gates, 
as witness his little tilt with Dr. Charles 
Hodge, the eminent polemist, over the per- 
fection of the canonical Scriptures. Hodge 
illustrated his own attitude by inquiring 
whether, if we came upon a huge marble 
palace, in an obscure corner of which we were 
able to discover a red brick set in among the 
marble blocks, we should be justified in deny- 
ing that the structure was a marble palace. 

"By no means," answered young Van Dyke. 
"But we should say that it was a marble palace 
with a red brick in it; and that is the sort of 
claim we make for the Bible." 

In later years, when the question of creed 
revision was uppermost, he took his stand for 
a short and comprehensive confession of faith 
rather than one that was longer but more nar- 
rowly technical. In the Briggs heresy con- 
troversy, his constant plea was for charity of 
judgment, and a basis of action which should 
keep in good standing the honest and earnest 
progressive as well as the assuredly orthodox 
conservative; and in the discussions over inter- 
nal discipline which used to rack the church 
from time to time he was always in favour of 
— 217 — 



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allowing the largest practicable latitude in the 
matter of diversions not essentially unwhole- 
some. Doubtless it was the same spirit of re- 
volt against needless restrictions which led him 
away from all permanent pastoral associations, 
and into other fields of teaching where he 
could be more his own master. Even a college 
professorship he seemed to find somewhat op- 
pressive, and declined one at Johns Hopkins 
and resigned one at Princeton in order to de- 
vote his best efforts to literary work. In this 
field he felt truly free, roaming from themes 
religious to those of travel and sportsmanship 
and fiction and general criticism, for he was 
a devoted fisherman and a great reader; and 
now and then he would expand his scope of 
work by preaching as a volunteer to a parish 
that needed him, but just "for love of it," as 
he once expressed his idea, and not for pay. 
Of his dislike of mixing piety with pocket- 
money the story is told of a request which 
came to him from an editor for a prayer 
suited to some special occasion, to be published 
in a popular magazine; Van Dyke furnished 
the prayer, but promptly sent back the check 
received in payment for it, and the editor, not 
—218— 



Henry Van Dyke 



to be outdone in unworldliness, gave the sum 
to a children's charity. 

It was at Princeton that he was brought into 
rather close contact with Woodrow Wilson, 
a fellow-professor, and his appointment to 
The Hague was an outgrowth of the relations 
there established. On just what ground the 
President selected diplomacy as the line of ac- 
tivity in which to employ a genius of Van 
Dyke's stamp it is hard to guess, except on the 
general principle that led earlier Presidents 
to fill a few foreign posts with men of letters 
who could make a profitable use afterwards 
of their experiences and observations abroad. 
Happily, Van Dyke, like his colleague in 
Italy, Thomas Nelson Page, is socially gifted, 
and under certain conditions a diplomatist's 
personal popularity in the country to which he 
is accredited counts for a good deal. Few 
tasks can be conceived, however, less congenial 
to a man of Van Dyke's temperament and 
tastes than the care of American interests at 
the capital of a nation assumed to be as neu- 
tral as our own, during a war which, horrible 
as some of its features may be, must continually 
spur a poet's soul to express itself in forms 
— 219 — 



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prohibited. It will be possible now, let us 
hope, to get some more intimate glimpses of 
the war, from an inside point of view, than 
have been forthcoming thus far, since release 
from official bondage has set free the hand of 
him whom a literary friend once described 
as a poet-critic-essayist-novelist-educator-lec- 
turer- fisherman-pulpiteer. 

Washington, January ii, igij, 



-220- 



GIFFORD PINCHOT 

THE act of the National Academy of 
Sciences in conferring a medal upon 
Gifford Pinchot, in recognition of his 
"distinguished service for the direction and 
organization of the movement for the conser- 
vation of the national resources of the United 
States," calls to the fore again a figure once 
prominent in public affairs, but of late less 
conspicuous. Most of the newspaper notices 
drawn out by the presentation speak of 
Pinchot as the father of scientific forestry in 
this country. That designation must be taken 
with a large allowance for error. The man 
who gave economic forestry under Govern- 
ment auspices, as distinguished from silvicul- 
ture and wood-lot farming, its great impulse, 
was Dr. Bernhard E. Fernow, now Dean of 
Forestry in the University of Toronto. 
Pinchot came to Washington first as Dr. Fer- 
now's assistant. The subject was so little un- 
derstood in Congress, however, that the divi- 

221 



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sion devoted to it in the Department of Agri- 
culture was continually cramped for funds and 
repressed in scope, and Pinchot, finding him- 
self uncomfortable there, presently passed into 
a broader field in private life, where he could 
be his own master; and it was only when 
his former chief was called to Cornell Uni- 
versity to organize a forestry school, that he 
came back into the federal service as its official 
expert in his specialty. He was young, alert, 
assiduous. His social gifts were considerable. 
His youthful enthusiasm was backed by a 
generous bank account; and such a combina- 
tion, supplementing his training in this coun- 
try and abroad, enabled him to make a head- 
way with Congress for which one less prac- 
tically equipped could scarcely hope. Not 
only did he procure larger appropriations 
year by year, but in due course the compass of 
the office he filled was enlarged, and the divi- 
sion was raised to substantially the dignity of 
a bureau. 

The general conservation movement, as we 
know it today, grew out of the forestry move- 
ment by the most natural evolutionary pro- 
cess, although Pinchot's instrumentality in 

222 



Gifford Pinchot 



starting the train will always stand to his 
credit. The saving of the forests from wan- 
ton destruction meant an increase in water re- 
sources, and in order to make the most of these 
there must be a scientific system of storage and 
distribution. Who should undertake this? 
On the public lands, in connection with water- 
courses that crossed State boundaries, the 
proper power was the Federal Government, 
because State jurisdiction stopped short with 
the State border. Private appropriation of 
forests and water had been going on for years 
at such a rate that posterity seemed doomed to 
exclusion from the benefits of these things un- 
less a systematic campaign were set afoot to 
check the selfish practice. 

But the Government, as Pinchot viewed the 
matter, could not be trusted to work out the 
scheme unaided. He had had enough experi- 
ence with Congress to realize that, even when 
its purpose is most sincere, it knows too little 
about sundry scientific subjects to protect 
itself against dishonest machinations and bad 
advice from outside. The only hope, there- 
fore, of keeping the conservation movement 
alive and effective was to have a strong 
—223— 



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private organization always on the watch and 
ready to expose fallacies as promptly as they 
appeared. Hence the establishment of the 
National Conservation Association, in the 
oversight of whose activities Pinchot has won 
his chief fame. 

A very outspoken man, with a definiteness 
about his hatreds and a freedom in his use 
of epithets that are far from tactful, Pinchot 
has succeeded in making a good many power- 
ful enemies, especially since he has taken a 
strenuous part in politics. No physiognomist 
could note his tall, lithe figure at an age when 
men tend to grow heavy, his prominent tem- 
ples, his dep-set eyes, and the depression of 
his face at the junction of the nostrils with 
the upper lip, without recognizing his tem- 
peramental intenseness. The impression is 
heightened when he speaks, for he fairly pelts 
you with his words. He never lets an ad- 
verse argument, however trivial in itself, pass 
unchallenged, and he rarely smiles, though his 
face is relieved of a trifle of its habitual seri- 
ousness when he is amiably excited. 

One could hardly conceive of a personality 
less adapted for the hurly-burly of common 
— 224 — 



Gifford Pine hot 



political strife, and his effort, two years ago, 
to be elected Senator in the place of Penrose 
of Pennsylvania, was so surely foredoomed to 
failure that his best friends deplored his go- 
ing into the contest. His optimism would 
have been proof against any protest, however, 
had it been offered; he would have dismissed 
every remonstrance as the emanation of a faint 
heart. His one controlling thought was that 
in the Senate he would find an unequalled 
vantage-ground from which to push much- 
needed legislation; and on the possibility that 
an overwhelming defeat might inflict severe 
damage on the cause he was advocating, he 
wasted not a moment's consideration. 

But outside of politics Pinchot has a highly 
appropriate sphere of usefulness. He is try- 
ing to save the natural resources for the benefit 
of posterity; and, no matter how his speech 
and conduct may affect the mature men with 
whom he has occasion to wrestle, the appeal 
he makes to young people seems irresistible. 
He can explain problems of conservation to 
an audience of boys and girls in the grammar- 
school stage so as to reach their understand- 
ings and arouse in them a desire to help in 

— 225 — 



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the movement. He carries a class of colle- 
gians with him almost as if he owned them. 
In the Forestry Service he trained a staff of 
young subordinates who fairly worshipped 
him, and whose loyalty has remained un- 
shaken by any later vicissitudes. Here is ob- 
viously his undisputed field; and it is more 
than possible that the National Academy had 
in mind his work with, quite as much as his 
work for, future generations, in singling him 
out for the honour it conferred. 
Washington, April 27, igid. 



-226 — 



COL. EDWARD M. HOUSE 

BEHIND all the activities of the Presi- 
dent in the present international crisis 
has stood, not so obscured by the shad- 
ows as to escape the observation of the watch- 
ful, a smallish, soberly dressed grey man with 
a slender figure, a long, narrow face, cautious 
eyes, a high forehead, sparse hair and a close- 
cropped moustache, under which the lower lip 
clamps tight against the upper, as if the mouth 
were shut with a purpose. You might pass 
him twenty times in the street without noticing 
him, and the only thing which would attract 
your attention to him indoors probably would 
be the atmosphere of quiet in which he is en- 
veloped. He is practically noiseless in his 
movements — not sly or furtive, but simply 
noiseless — as if he had formed in his child- 
hood a habit of doing things in the way which 
would cause the fewest needless collisions and 
the least jar; and, except to ask questions, he 
rarely lets fall a word among strangers. This 
— 227 — 



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is the man whom one European journalist has 
dubbed "the sphinx in the soft felt hat," an- 
other "the dumb missionary," a third our most 
accomplished expert "in the delicate art of 
saying nothing," and a fourth "the friend, in- 
spirer, boss, and alter ego of President Wil- 
son," and of whom the President himself has 
playfully said: "He is my eyes." To the 
great body of Americans who know him 
chiefly through the newspaper headlines de- 
scribing conferences at the White House with 
"Colonel House of Texas," he is about as 
much of a mystery as to the foreign commen- 
tators. 

There is nothing really mysterious about 
Edward Mandell House except his military 
title, which another Texan tells me was thrust 
upon him by a former Governor of their State 
who appointed him an aide-de-camp on his 
stafif without so much as asking leave. Had 
House been consulted, there is abundant rea- 
son to believe he would have declined to serve, 
as it is a sort of religion with him to hold no 
offices, belong to no societies, attend no con- 
ventions, take no part in public meetings, and 
generally to efface his personality as far as pos- 
—228— 



Col. Edward M. House 



sible, so as to have the more of himself to 
throw into whatever work he has undertaken 
to do. More than one Governor of Texas has 
owed his elevation to the shrewd and unadver- 
tised tactics of Colonel House, and President 
Wilson has leaned upon him constantly in the 
gravest emergencies. In this relation, House 
has played the part not only of eyes, but of 
ears. He has done the moving about, the see- 
ing and hearing which the President could not 
possibly do. When the President announces 
that what he is trying to accomplish is the in- 
terpretation into fact of the thoughts and 
wishes of the voiceless multitude, it is House 
who is acting as his medium for learning what 
those thoughts and wishes are. Whether the 
voiceless multitude has always the wisest judg- 
ment in public affairs may be open to question ; 
but that House has actually found out what 
that judgment is, and conveyed it honestly to 
the President, may as fairly be inferred from 
the result of last November's national election. 
And beyond a doubt the utterances of the 
President in his notes to the belligerent Powers 
and his recent addresses to Congress were out- 
growths of House's reports to him of the state 
— 229 — 



National Miniatures 



of the popular mind abroad, as distinguished 
from the official mind. 

It would be natural to assume that such an 
intimacy as exists between these two men must 
be the fruit of a friendship of many years' 
standing; for a fact, however, they were not 
even acquainted a year before the assembling 
of the memorable Baltimore Convention. 
They were brought together then because 
friends of Mr. Wilson felt that he must, in 
order to be nominated, have the Texas delega- 
tion, which seemed likely otherwise to be 
counted for Judson Harmon. They took an 
instant liking to one another, and so absolute 
is the faith of the Texas Democratic organiza- 
tion in the magical discernment of House that, 
when he notified its leaders that he had found 
the candidate they had all been waiting for, a 
delegation was made up for Baltimore who 
could be trusted to stick to Wilson through 
thick and thin. 

House is not a rich man, as rich men go 
nowadays. He inherited a comfortable estate 
from his father, who was a considerable land- 
owner, was interested in cotton culture, and 
did not a little banking in connection with the 
—230— 



Col. Edward M. House 



various irons he had in the fire. The Colonel 
has not done much more than conserve and im- 
prove what came into his hands by descent, 
and no one has ever heard of his going into 
any speculative ventures, albeit he has taken 
a hand in railway management in the South 
and been a director in a prominent Northern 
trust company. Though born and reared in 
Texas and still hailing from there, he received 
his schooling in New Haven and his college 
training at Cornell. It is his mixture of 
Northern and Southern interests, indeed, 
which has enabled him to compute so success- 
fully the average of public sentiment in the 
country at large. His distaste for narrow sec- 
tionalism is possibly reflected in his selec- 
tion for his summer home of the town in Essex 
County, Massachusetts, which derives its name 
from the fact that it is the northernmost 
habitat of the typically southern magnolia. 
Washington, February is, iQi?- 



—231— 



JANE ADDAMS 

WHEN Jane Addams was last in 
Washington, to preside over a 
world-peace gathering, the com- 
mon remark was that she had lost her hold 
on a considerable part of her old constituency. 
There was a time when Miss Addams had only 
to open her lips and the whole country listened. 
Indeed, her voice could be heard across the 
sea, as was evidenced when John Burns, the 
English labour leader, pronounced her "the 
only saint America has produced," and other 
Old-World notables made use of her name and 
exploited her ideas in public utterances to 
their home people. 

It would be hard to define precisely the 
character of the change that seems to have 
come over feeling here. It was recognizable 
in the rather perfunctory quality of the ap- 
plause which greeted her appearance on the 
platform, and it was not unlike what has been 
observed here repeatedly in the cases of po- 
—232— 



Jane Addams 



litical leaders who have overloaded their pres- 
tige with unfamiliar burdens. It contained 
no hint of derogation of her earlier activities. 
Jane Addams of Hull House loomed large 
in the history of her special era, and is still 
cherished as warmly as ever in the popular 
affections; but Jane Addams of the World 
seems a small figure projected against a huge 
background. Hull House and its work she 
knew from centre to circumference. As her 
fame spread and she was drawn into other 
lines of activity, however, her definiteness of 
vision seemed to suffer. The limit was 
reached, perhaps, four summers ago, when she 
became engulfed in the Progressive party 
whirlpool, where "Bill" Flinn of Pennsyl- 
vania and other boss-trained veterans were 
grasping at everything in sight which might 
be trusted to bring a vote to the polls in 
November. No one human mind could have 
compassed such a hodge-podge as was in- 
cluded in the demands of the new party pro- 
gram, and the leaders of the movement did 
not hesitate to crack a jest on the fact in private. 
The one great object they had in view was 
the destruction of a certain public man and 
—233— 



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the banishment of his following; and persons 
like Miss Addams were used, quite uncon- 
sciously to themselves, as advertising figure- 
heads, to give an air of genuineness to the so- 
called crusade. 

What did surprise many former warm sup- 
porters of Miss Addams was that she should 
not have apprehended the real position as- 
signed to her in the general scheme, for she 
had not been without experiences calculated to 
sharpen her mental eyesight for the detec- 
tion of tawdry illusions and false philosophy. 
There was the incident of the old Scotchwo- 
man in the Hull House neighbourhood, whom 
she found walking out one raw winter day in 
clothing which struck her as too thin for the 
temperature. Taking the fur-lined circular 
from her own shoulders, she threw it around 
those of the woman, a free gift. Afterward, 
her friends suspected, she came to realize that 
she had done a rather foolish thing in her over- 
prompt response to a generous impulse; for 
the old woman could have been adequately 
protected with a less fine and inappropriate 
garment, and a philanthropic end accom- 
plished by a means not so uneconomic. Every 
—234— 



Jane Addams 



one will recall her confession of her morbid 
fancy, as a child, for not walking with her 
father in public, because she was so painfully 
conscious of her imperfections that she did not 
wish to cast discredit upon him in the eyes of 
other people who might suspect their relation- 
ship; but along with this went her habit of at- 
taching herself to her uncle in the street, 
blindly disregarding the fact that, were any 
odium to come to her escort on her account, 
she was merely shifting it from one good man 
who loved her to another. 

Then, there was her worship of Bronson 
Alcott because he was the friend of her idol, 
Emerson; extending to the point of surrep- 
titiously getting hold of his cloth overshoes 
and cleaning them of mud "in a state of 
ecstatic energy." And it is a delicious story 
she tells of the impression left on her mind 
by a visit to Tolstoy, at which he enlarged to 
her upon his primitive theory of regenerating 
the world by having every one perform with 
his own hands the labour necessary for the 
supply of his individual wants, and of her 
coming back to America resolved to devote 
two hours every day thereafter to working 
—235— 



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in a Chicago bakery, on the assumption that 
that amount of labour would just about sup- 
ply the essentials of her simple diet! 

All these conceits, and a few others, born 
of an unwholesome habit of introspective 
self-analysis, she apparently outgrew as she 
came to a better balanced state of mind. At 
several she was able even to laugh soon after 
their occurrence. But they ought to have 
warned her against too ready an acceptance 
of any remedial nostrum with a plausible 
label. When Miss Boardman rebuked her for 
having, by an alliance with the Progressive 
party in 1912, arrayed the enginery of her 
prestige against Mr. Taft, who, as president 
of the Red Cross, stood for so much that she 
had advocated in behalf of humanity, the 
accuser may have been as super-sensitive on 
the one hand as the accused was over-zealous 
on the other; but it did startle many excellent 
people to notice what Miss Addams had let 
herself in for, and they are moved to won- 
der whither she will turn in 1916 if the 
Progressives desert their semi-detached allies 
in order to save themselves. Nor has it been 
forgotten that her views on lynching in the 
—236— 



Jane Addams 



South, as publicly uttered a few years ago, 
laid more than common stress upon the con- 
sideration that the crime charged against the 
negro victims richly deserved the punishment 
decreed for it. Although this was not, of it- 
self, a plea for lawlessness, it was one of those 
expressions to which a worldly-wise person 
would have preferred not to give utterance at 
that particular juncture, when a carnival of 
violence was in progress. 

The tendency of such a career as Miss 
Addams has had of late years is doubtless 
towards mental '^all-overishness," if we may 
embalm in print a current colloquialism. 
Hull House is, and will always remain, a 
magnificent monument to its founder and chief 
promoter, and Miss Addams is still, except for 
a certain surface hardening due to contact 
with the larger world outside, the same vivid 
and interesting personality as in her compara- 
tive youth. What she has lost in the intensity 
of her appeal appears to have been sacrificed 
to an endeavour to do too much in too many 
alien and untried fields, with its incidental 
diffusion of her native force. 

Washington, February 3, igid. 

—237— 



HENRY WATTERSON 

TWO prominent Democrats who were 
much in evidence four years ago 
seem more inclined to play the part 
of B'rer Rabbit in the present national cam- 
paign. George Harvey, from all accounts, is 
having a very good time as a spectator of the 
passing show, letting Mrs. Harvey do the 
political work for the family, though in op- 
position to his prime favourite of 191 2, 
Woodrow Wilson. Henry Watterson of the 
Louisville Courier-Journal, while not oppos- 
ing Wilson, explains his lack of effervescence 
by saying that ''a man might wish to vote for 
another without being willing to sleep with 
him." Possibly the President, who has some- 
what a fancy for playing a lone hand, is satis- 
fied with Watterson's position, but he might 
have many a worse bedfellow; for, in spite of 
certain eccentricities over which his contem- 
poraries chuckle now and then, he is a man of 
character and experience, a brilliant writer, 
—238— 



Henry Waiter son 



and famed as a hater of humbugs in politics. 
He used to go to all the Democratic national 
conventions, and it was a rare occasion when he 
was not captured by the committee on reso- 
lutions and induced to prepare at least an im- 
portant part of the platform. Hence he was 
credited, for several years after the Convention 
of 1880 that nominated Hancock, with the 
authorship of its demand for a "tarifif for re- 
venue only," which became a party watch- 
word; but he modestly disclaimed the honour, 
having actually opposed the use of the phrase 
till out-voted, not because he lacked sympathy 
with the principle it embodied, but because as 
an experienced forecaster he apprehended the 
use the Republicans could make of that par- 
ticular language at that particular juncture. 
I never heard of his denying the paternity, 
however, of ''the star-eyed Goddess of Re- 
form," which for a time was almost as famous. 
Watterson is less frequently seen on the 
lyceum stage now than when he was younger. 
At the time when he was most in demand, he 
used to suffer tortures from nervousness on 
facing an audience; but before he had pro- 
ceeded far he would have every soul in the 
—239— 



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hall in touch with him, and could move them 
as he chose, to laughter, to enthusiasm or to 
tears. Looking at him then, with his unim- 
pressive stature, his stocky build, his short 
arms, his near-sighted eyes almost hidden be- 
neath aggressive brows, you found yourself 
wondering whence all his reputed power could 
come. It was not till he got into full action 
that you realized that, in oratory as in jour- 
nalism, the secret of his success lay in — tem- 
perament. Yes; and watching him, with his 
great shock of tawny grey hair rising as he 
swung his head and falling haphazard, his 
heavy moustache taking a rhythmic motion 
as his lips brought out word after word clean- 
cut and forceful, and his arms, not often called 
into play for gesture, but circling about him 
like spokes in a horizontal mill-wheel when 
they were: of what were you constantly kept 
reminded by association? Not of a delver at 
an editorial desk, or of a popular leader on a 
political rostrum, but of an artist at the piano! 
And this was no illusion, for Watterson began 
life as a musician. He studied under the best 
masters in Paris, and was expecting to go upon 
the stage, when an accident to one of his 
— 240 — 



Henry Watterson 



thumbs put a summary end to this ambition. 
His closest companions for several years were 
professional musicians, Gottschalk and the 
Patti family being among them. His first 
essays in serious journalism were musical 
criticisms, and he can give you today as per- 
fectly finished an article on the opera as on the 
news from the partisan battle-front. 

It is one of the most interesting facts about 
Watterson that, though a hard fighter in his 
newspaper for any cause he has espoused, he 
contrives to carry on his warfare against what 
certain men stand for, without sacrificing the 
good-will of the men themselves. In any 
circle of mature Republicans, for instance, the 
mention of this life-long Democrat will call 
forth almost as cordial expressions as would 
be lavished upon a prominent member of their 
own party. No one can forget how, in the 
midst of a hostile environment, the courageous 
editor fought the battles of the enfranchised 
negroes against the white element who were 
denying them even decent recognition of their 
human claims. His great idol and exemplar 
in public life was Abraham Lincoln, and 
his chief mentor in journalism was Horace 
—241— 



National Miniatures 



Greeley. And all this was true in spite of his 
having passed a part of the Civil War period 
in the Confederate army as a chief of scouts, 
and another part editing the Chattanooga 
Rebel. 

His contempt for political pretenders was 
illustrated in a series of articles which did 
much towards snuffing out the aspirations of 
David B. Hill as a Presidency-chaser; and 
when Bryan was nominated in 1896 he packed 
his trunk and sailed for Europe, leaving word 
for his partner to encourage the launching of 
another ticket, hopeless as it might be of vic- 
tory, and then ''letting the fools and the frauds 
have it out between themselves." He had al- 
ready, in the autumn of 1895, predicted with 
some certainty what was coming, and ad- 
dressed a bit of homely editorial advice to the 
little gang of cheap Democratic politicians 
who, for their own profit, were playing upon 
the ignorance of their mob-following by ad- 
vocating the debasement of the currency: 
"They laugh best who laugh last. 'Free sil- 
ver' may be a good dog, but 'I told you so' is a 
better. Heed it, you jabberwocks, heed it! 
The tail may wag the dog in Persia and India 
— 242 — 



Henry W atterson 



and China and Mexico and Peru, but it never 
has done it in these United States and it never 
will. Run, you jabberwocks, run!" 

The jabberwocks scofifed at his advice, and 
their party went out of power for sixteen long 
years as a consequence. They discovered too 
late that Watterson as an interpreter of omens 
was not a person to be lightly ignored. 
Washington, October 12, igiO. 



—243— 



ROBERT TODD LINCOLN 

MANY newspaper readers have 
thought it strange, in view of the re- 
cent revival of memories of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, to see so little mention anywhere 
of his surviving son; for Robert Todd Lin- 
coln is a prominent citizen of Chicago and an 
officer of several corporations, including the 
Pullman Company, in which he has been the 
most conspicuous figure since the death of its 
founder. The reticence of the press is due 
chiefly to his intense distaste for needless pub- 
licity. For one thing, he is philosopher 
enough to appreciate the disadvantages of the 
inevitable popular comparison between a dis- 
tinguished father and his offspring. In a case 
where the father had almost ceased to be re- 
membered as a man and come to be wor- 
shipped like a demi-god, the disagreeable side 
of all this would, of course, have been in- 
tensified ; and the tragic end of the War Presi- 
dent, and the unconscionable liberties later 
—244— 



Robert Todd Lincoln 



taken with his family by the professional gos- 
sip-mongers, were a further influence in the 
same direction. Since his administration as 
Secretary of War in the Cabinets of Garfield 
and Arthur, and his comings and goings as our 
Minister to England under Harrison, Wash- 
ington has seen comparatively little of Robert 
Lincoln, though he is so well remembered at 
the capital that every item of news about him 
brought in by visitors from Chicago finds a 
circle of interested listeners. 

Outside of personal considerations, Mr. Lin- 
coln has an especial claim upon the notice 
of all Americans for the share he uncon- 
sciously bore in making his father President. 
Abraham Lincoln, realizing what a handicap 
it was to a man with ambitions for the broader 
walks of public service to be acquainted with 
the people and the social atmosphere of only 
one section of the country, was resolved that 
his children should know the East not less 
well than the West, and to that end marked 
young Robert for Harvard University. The 
boy had had some preliminary training in the 
branches required for his entrance examina- 
tion, but not enough, and by the advice of 
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several respected friends he was sent to finish 
his preparatory studies at the Phillips Acad- 
emy in Exeter, N. H. The course there was 
pretty severe, and his father thought it might 
be well, if opportunity offered, to pay him a 
visit in term time. 

The name of Abraham Lincoln was already 
fairly familiar to the people of the East 
through the newspaper reports of his stump de- 
bates with Stephen A. Douglas, and, besides, he 
had received next to the highest vote for Vice- 
President in the convention that launched the 
Fremont ticket. He was generally reputed to 
be a fascinating speaker, notwithstanding his 
awkward presence, and a great many people 
were curious to see him. It so happened that 
Plymouth Church, in Brooklyn, was conduct- 
ing a course of popular lectures in the winter 
of 1859-60, and it occurred to the committee 
in charge that Lincoln might prove an attrac- 
tion. Their offer of two hundred dollars for 
a single appearance, coupled with a hint that 
other lyceums near by might also like to have 
him, was promptly accepted, as it presented 
the possibility of a visit to his son with all ex- 
penses paid; his sole condition was that he 
— 246 — 



Robert Todd Lincoln 



should be allowed to speak on a political sub- 
ject of his own choosing. Some of the church 
members appear to have entertained a belated 
misgiving on this head, as Mr. Beecher was 
doing a good deal in the same line himself. 
The Young Men's Central Republican Union 
of New York, however, stepped in at this 
juncture and took the contract off the church's 
hands, and on February 27, i860, in Cooper 
Union, Mr. Lincoln faced an audience differ- 
ent from any he had ever before addressed; it 
was made up mostly of substantial citizens 
who could not have been induced to attend an 
ordinary political rally, a large proportion 
being ladies. 

He chose for his text an extract from one of 
Douglas's speeches denying the right of the 
Federal authority to control the question of 
slavery in the Territories, in spite of the fact 
that it controlled all other governmental mat- 
ters there. Taking Douglas's own arguments 
and turning them back upon themselves, he so 
riddled them with his logic that the audience 
burst frequently into applause and laughter, 
and the leading newspapers the next morning 
pronounced him the most convincing orator 
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New York had ever heard on the slavery ques- 
tion. Forthwith began to pour in upon him 
demands that he should visit this and that 
point in New England on his way to or from 
Exeter. Up to that time the New Englanders 
had been somewhat prejudiced against the 
newcomer in politics because he hailed from 
what they regarded as a very raw and uncul- 
tured region and was himself said to be shock- 
ingly uncouth; and with men of so much 
higher type among their neighbours, why 
should they go so far afield for a candidate at 
the coming election? 

But after his trip to Exeter there was prac- 
tically nothing left of this feeling. Wher- 
ever he spoke on that journey, the echoes of his 
visit continued ringing down to the time of the 
meeting of the Chicago Convention. On the 
first ballot for a Presidential candidate New 
England gave him 19 votes, on the second 32, 
on the third 42, and then rushed in to help 
make the nomination unanimous. And to the 
steadfast loyalty and earnest work of his new 
friends from "Down East," won on that mem- 
orable trip to see his son Robert, he owed a 
—248— 



Robert Todd Lincoln 



generous share of the credit for the turn of the 
tide against his rival, Seward. 

During his residence in Washington and 
abroad, Robert Lincoln was regarded as a 
rather handsome man of the strictly worldly 
type; he has never borne in his face or frame 
any strong resemblance to his father. His 
countenance lacks the spiritual light which 
made the War President's so lustrous in spite 
of its ugliness of mould. His features are 
heavier, and his body inclines to ponderous- 
ness as he grows old. His manner is polite, 
but not sociable, and he has none of the magne- 
tism which made his father the central human 
figure of an era. 

Washington, August 12, IQ17. 



—249— 



LESLIE M. SHAW 

THAT was a characteristic contrast be- 
tween two men which was revealed by 
the newspapers in recording, on the 
same day, subscriptions to the Liberty Loan by 
ex-Secretary Bryan of $i,ooo and by ex-Secre- 
tary Shaw of $10,000. It was not the first 
time they had widely differed on the question 
of sustaining the public credit. In the year 
when Bryan was making his whirlwind cam- 
paign through the West, soliciting votes for 
the Presidency on the strength of the free-sil- 
ver-coinage millstone he had hung about the 
neck of his party, Shaw was making his mark 
by standing stiff for a dollar worth one hun- 
dred cents, and forcing people to listen to the 
arguments for honest dealing. Fortunately, 
not only his State but the whole country even- 
tually sided with him, and the day was saved. 

Leslie Mortier Sbaw is one of the "Eastern 
men with Western characteristics" with whom 
Chauncey Depew once classed Roosevelt. 
— 250 — 



Leslie M. Shaw 



Like Roosevelt, he owes his career partly to 
accident. Born and reared on his father's 
farm in Vermont, he had never travelled far- 
ther than perhaps the next county; but, being 
called upon, towards the end of his course at 
the local academy, to write a "piece" to read 
before an audience of his neighbours, he chose 
for his subject "The Great West," and drew 
his material from various books and pamphlets 
within his reach. The research this involved 
stirred his ambition to see the wonderful coun- 
try he was describing; so, having an uncle who 
was a farmer in Iowa, he presently packed his 
small belongings and started for that State. 
It happened that a country college was near 
enough to his uncle's farm to enable him to 
attend it, and he worked his way through by 
farm labour during term time and peddling 
nursery stock about the surrounding district in 
vacations. His college course decided him to 
study law; but after his admission to the bar 
another idea seized him. Back in Vermont 
he had often heard the more well-to-do people 
complain that they could get so little income 
from their investments in their own region; 
in rural Iowa, on the other hand, the farmers 
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were complaining that they had to pay extor- 
tionate rates of interest to neighbouring banks 
for every loan they obtained on mortgage se- 
curity. Why, then, wondered young Shaw, 
should not the two classes be brought together, 
so that the Eastern lenders could get better re- 
turns and the Western borrowers more reason- 
able rates of interest, and the fellow who stood 
between them a comfortable commission for 
his services? The thought was father to the 
deed, and in a comparatively little while the 
two parties were enjoying the change, and he 
was the commission man in the middle. 

His system proved an abundant success, and 
was in full swing when the free-silver coinage 
epidemic swept over the West. Shaw read in 
it the doom of the structure he had so indus- 
triously built up, unless it could be checked in 
time. Bryan, fresh from the temporary 
triumph of his "cross of gold" speech, was 
galloping through Iowa, and came to the town 
where Shaw was living. Shaw heard him, 
realized the plausibility of his plea for silver, 
and felt deeply his own ignorance of the ramifi- 
cations of the subject and his inexperience in 
argumentative speaking outside of a court. 
— 252 — 



Leslie M, Shaw 



But he gathered all the financial literature he 
could, shut himself up through most of his 
spare hours in a little room in the basement 
of his house, and bent to the task of answering 
Bryan. A local meeting gave him the op- 
portunity of trying his speech "on a dog," as 
the actors say, and he woke the next morning 
to find himself famous. From that moment 
till election day he had barely an hour to him- 
self, so persistently did invitations pour in 
from all parts of the State; but when the re- 
turns were announced, and Iowa was found 
in the sound-money column with a plurality of 
more than sixty-five thousand to her credit, the 
one remark heard on every side in the camp 
of the victors was: "Next year we elect a 
Governor, and Leslie Shaw has nominated 
himself by his work this fall." 

It was while he was Governor that he met 
Roosevelt, who, running for Vice-President 
on the McKinley ticket, passed through Iowa 
on a stumping tour. Shaw, as an act of cour- 
tesy, joined him on his journey through the 
State, and, with his ingenuity, his quaint ways, 
his good stories, and his bottomless fund of 
humour, quite captivated the candidate. On 

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succeeding McKinley in the Presidency, 
Roosevelt asked Gage to remain at the head of 
the Treasury, but Gage, who was used to a 
more conservative and moderate-paced chief, 
feared that they might not get along together 
for a protracted pull and insisted on retiring 
after a few months. Instantly, the thought of 
Shaw's brilliant fight for sound money re- 
curred to the President mind, and Shaw was 
called to the Secretaryship. The rest of his 
life-story is too much in the ordinary vein to 
call for recital here. 

Every Cabinet officer is remembered in 
Washington for certain peculiarities, personal 
or official. Those most commonly associated 
with Shaw have to do with his whitened hair 
and moustache, his surplus toe on each foot, 
his habit of fumbling at some article of dress 
on the man he is talking to at close range, and 
his manner of parrying unwelcome questions. 
An ofTer he once received, and was consider- 
ing, of a site for a public building, disturbed 
the real estate agents a good deal, for they 
could not ascertain the price demanded, which 
might sharply affect the prices set on other 
land near by. One broker, who believed he 
—254— 



Leslie M. Shaw 



could worm out the facts by indirection, 
sought Shaw at the Treasury. "Have you 
closed yet with Smith for his lot, Mr. Secre- 
tary?" he inquired, innocently. 

"Not yet," answered Shaw, without looking 
up from a letter he was writing. 

"What does he ask for it?" 

"About twice as much as it's worth." 

Here was an opening at last. 

"And what do you consider it worth, Mr. 
Secretary?" 

"About one-half what he asks for it." 

Not till the discomfited broker turned to 
leave did the Secretary let his eyes stray from 
the paper before him, and then it was only to 
look after the retreating figure with a shrewd 
smile of satisfaction. 

Washington, September 6, IQ17. 



—255— 



EMMA GOLDMAN 

RECENT events in Petrograd and 
Kronstadt must have brought rare 
comfort to the soul of Emma Gold- 
man, prophetess of anarchy — the real article, 
warranted one hundred per cent, pure, name 
stamped on every package. Born in Russia 
and educated in Germany, she enjoyed during 
her girlhood exceptional opportunities for 
studying autocracy of various brands, and ap- 
parently conceived the stronger liking for the 
Russian sort, as offering the widest scope for 
fomenting rebellion. In the United States, 
whither she came with relatives as a young 
woman, she first emerged from obscurity in 
1893, when she was arrested on a charge of 
inciting to riot by a speech made at a gathering 
of habitual malcontents in Union Square, New 
York. The judge who presided at her trial 
stretched consideration to the utmost limit in 
giving her the advantage of every favouring 
technicality, but the case was so clear that the 
—256— 



Emma Goldman 



jury was unanimous on the first ballot for con- 
viction, and she was sentenced to one year in 
the penitentiary. 

The trial served to bring out in a most 
illuminating way her vagaries on various sub- 
jects, including the facts that she was an atheist 
and a disbeliever in all government and law, 
divine or human; that her pet hobby was that 
the rich are the oppressors of the poor, and 
the ultimate cause of all the suffering and 
crime in the world, against which the poor are 
justified in revolting; that she did not per- 
sonally believe in violence or robbery except 
where necessary, and that she would leave the 
question of necessity to every one's individual 
judgment, not even using her influence to pre- 
vent pillage; that she was married, though to 
whom was nobody's business but her own; 
that she had been living with Alexander Berk- 
man shortly before his attempt to assassinate 
Henry C. Frick, and, though she had not pub- 
licly approved of that act, she "sympathized 
with Mr. Berkman for his courage" — what- 
ever that may have meant; and that her mis- 
sion in life was to make the poor understand 
that the better-ofif are accountable for their 
—257— 



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poverty, and thus to promote the social revolu- 
tion. The proceedings in court w^ere handled, 
like those in the case of Guiteau in Washing- 
ton a dozen years before, so as to let the ac- 
cused give free vent to her craving for self- 
exploitation, and thus show every one exactly 
what she was. 

Since quitting the penitentiary she has been 
arrested repeatedly, but — thanks to the benign- 
ity of the laws she denounces and the im- 
partiality of the courts she derides — with no 
results more permanent than follow the spas- 
modic warfare of the householder upon flies 
and roaches: with every relaxation she has re- 
turned to her rantings, refreshed in body and 
spirit by her brief rest. Snubs such as she 
received when she attended, uninvited, a meet- 
ing of striking garment-makers and they re- 
fused to let her address them, seem to leave no 
scars on her egotism; but this is scarcely won- 
derful when a Congregational minister in one 
city turns over his church to her to lecture in, 
and a Society of Mayflower Descendants in 
another makes her its chief guest at a recep- 
tion. An incident which did disturb her com- 
posure for a while was a threatened prosecu- 
—258— 



Emma Goldman 



tion, in 1901, for advising the assassination of 
President McKinley. Czolgosz had con- 
fessed that it was her teachings which had fired 
his brain with the idea of killing the Presi- 
dent, and she admitted that he had attended 
one of her lectures and been so impressed by it 
that he had hunted her up afterward to make 
her acquaintance. She was released pres- 
ently, however, because there was no direct 
proof that she had been a conscious party to 
any plot actually to murder the man whom she 
reviled, while he lay on his dying bed, as "the 
most insignificant ruler the country ever had," 
with "neither wit nor intelligence." 

Most newspaper readers are so accustomed 
to thinking of Emma Goldman as simply a 
human firebrand that it is hard to make them 
realize that by calling she is a dressmaker and 
a trained nurse. She is a small, wiry woman, 
about fifty years old, who might be passed any- 
where in a crowd without notice. Her sharp 
black eyes, intense expression and rather 
coarse mouth have nothing distinctive about 
them at the first glance, though they become 
more significant with familiarity; and her eye- 
glasses, framed in part by sharply marked 
—259— 



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brows, give her an air of active mentality 
which is lacking in some others of her general 
type. Her face is too symmetrical to be 
classed as that of a natural "crank," but you 
have only to talk with her for five minutes in 
order to discover how strong an appeal the 
theatrical side of social chaos makes to her. 
Smiles she reserves mostly for sneering pur- 
poses; but once her sense of humour was 
touched so unexpectedly that she had to control 
her laughter, though the blood mounted to her 
forehead in tell-tale fashion. This was when, 
after delivering a diatribe on the way poverty 
drove men to crime, she became deeply inter- 
ested in the case of a man arrested for petty 
larceny. He looked like a chronic down-and- 
outer, and the complaint against him was that 
he had robbed a poor woman of her purse con- 
taining twenty-five cents. His defence was 
that he needed the money to get a night's lodg- 
ing. Questions drew from him the statement 
that a bed cost him ten or fifteen cents a night. 
Miss Goldman was bending forward, her eyes 
burning, her mouth fixed; here was an exhibit 
worth having of what poverty would drive 
a man to — an illustration perfectly fitted to the 
— 260 — 



Emma Goldman 



gospel she had just been promulgating. Then 
the prosecutor sprang a surprise. Producing 
the contents found in the prisoner's pocket, he 
spread before the jury a handful of change. 

"What did you want of this poor woman's 
quarter when you had all this money already?" 
he demanded. The fellow looked con- 
temptuous. 

"It was only seventy-eight cents!" he 
snorted. 

That ended the case for the court. It ceased 
also to interest Miss Goldman as an illustra- 
tion direct from life. 

Washington, June 28, igij. 



-261 — 



WILLIAM J. BURNS 

WILLIAM JOHN BURNS, whose 
recent activities in the Seymour 
case in New York have kept him 
"head-lined" in the newspapers there, is well 
known in Washington, where for several years 
he was a member of the Secret Service detailed 
for special work. It would be hard to find a 
man with less outward resemblance to the Old 
Sleuth of the detective stories. His face, 
though not so large and smiling as ex-President 
Taft's, suggests it strongly in the lines radiat- 
ing in all directions from the nose. His frame 
is powerful, he has a double chin, and his girth 
is full without being excessive. His eyes are 
light, symmetrically set, steady of gaze, but not 
piercing; and temperamentally he strikes you 
as well poised, never giving way to undue en- 
thusiasms, and equally avoiding aloofness. 

There is no single key to the secret of 
Burns's success, which has as many phases 
as the wind. First, he makes it so rigid a rule 
— 262 — 



William J. Burns 



to take nothing for granted that I venture 
to say, if the trial of a forgery, for instance, 
seemed to lead into the White House, not 
even the President could escape scrutiny. 
Again, he works up a case as a student com- 
monly prepares a thesis, looking over his 
ground with the utmost thoroughness, settling 
upon a definite assumption of fact, and then 
marshalling every occurrence, tradition, argu- 
ment, guess, or theory which can be made to 
pay tribute to it. Also, he is absolutely tire- 
less in body and mind and contemptuous of 
anything which gets in his way, especially 
of the conventional proprieties where they 
threaten to shield a suspect whom he is after. 
Finally, he does not attempt a capture till he 
feels sure that he has got his quarry past the 
possibility of escape. Of course, he is liable 
to mistakes like other human beings; but the 
multitude and magnitude of his unequivocal 
successes have led the public to presume the 
guilt of any one upon whom he pounces at the 
end of his painstaking pursuit. 

Whoever believes that "crooks" are born, 
and not made, will quarrel with the notion 
cherished by Burns that the best of us will 
—263— 



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bear watching, and that no absolute assurance 
can be drawn from an apparently spotless past 
career. I have been present on more than one 
occasion when he has put a man of supposed 
virtuous character through the closest ordeal. 
This consists of being seated in a private room, 
face to face with Burns, alone or in the pres- 
ence of perhaps one other person who is sup- 
posed to know the details of the case, and ques- 
tioned. Burns, satisfied that he has caught 
his man, gives him a chance to confess. If he 
does not yield at once. Burns inquires why he 
does not, and perhaps proceeds to reason with 
him as to the practical wisdom of clearing his 
conscience without further delay. If that 
fails, Burns seems to be pointed towards his 
next move by the emotional symptoms of the 
suspect. Bravado he meets with a manner 
which shows very plainly that it is thrown 
away on him. Evasion draws from him vol- 
ley after volley of stinging interrogatories: 
"Now tell me, what first tempted you to do 
this?" "Can you pretend that you did not 
know better than to do such a thing?" 
"Come — out with it! — you thought it wasn't 
very bad, didn't you?" "Have you ever done 
anything of this sort before?" And so on and 
— 264 — 



William J. Burns 



on, till the squirming fellow inadvertently 
blurts out an answer which will bear only one 
construction, and is therefore equivalent to an 
admission of guilt. After that, the rest is 
comparatively easy. 

Naturally, the greatest difficulty is experi- 
enced where the suspect shows neither ef- 
frontery nor weakness, but calmly answers 
the questions put to him and waits for more. 
Such instances are rare, and usually the man 
with the unshifting mien of innocence, if 
really guilty, will be betrayed by some glance, 
or intonation of voice, or request for repeti- 
tion, which, however faint in itself, telegraphs 
its confirmatory message to the sensitive intel- 
ligence of the inquisitor. In short, it is his 
own wits, pitted against the nerves of his vic- 
tims, in which Burns reposes his trust, rather 
than on physical force. He scorns the re- 
volver habit, and goes boldly in among the 
criminals he is studying with his brain always 
alert, but his pockets empty of weapons. The 
professional evil-doers know this; yet his 
despisal of danger and the cocksure resolution 
with which he sets about his work constitute 
a safeguard as efifective as a portable arsenal. 
— 265 — 



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Burns, who is now about fifty-five years old, 
began life as an assistant in his father's tailor- 
shop in Columbus, O. The father, active in 
the city's public afifairs, happened to be made 
Police Commissioner. William, who had al- 
ways taken a boy's interest in mystery stories, 
came thus into contact with the local detec- 
tive force, and one day criticized its method 
of going at a particularly involved case. The 
elder Burns chuckled somewhat at these com- 
ments. 

"So you think you could do the job better 
than my men?" he asked, with amusement. 

"I know I could," was the lad's instant an- 
swer. 

To prove his confidence, he went at the case 
himself, caught his man, and brought him. in. 
From that hour his calling has been unques- 
tioned. 

Washington, July 13, igiO. 



—266— 



ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 

WHILE battle-lines in the European 
war are doing their fighting on or- 
ders communicated by telephone 
from airships, it is natural that the name of 
Alexander Graham Bell should be on the lips 
of every well-read visitor to Washington, his 
career having been so largely associated with 
the transmission of the human voice by wire 
and with aerial navigation. 

Dr. Bell is the typical Scotchman in ap- 
pearance, speech and manner. His broad 
face, framed in a mass of white hair which 
rises in a great shock above his brow and 
stands out around his jaws and chin like the 
unbroken mane of a lion, prepares you for the 
rattling burr that adds piquancy to whatever 
he says. He is a man whom you would de- 
scribe as big rather than large, and the adjec- 
tive applies to everything about him — his 
height, his shoulders, his hands, his carriage. 
I was going to add his voice, but that might 
— 267 — 



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convey a false impression: for, though his 
lungs are as leonine as his head, his long re- 
search in the field of vocal phenomena has 
cultivated in him a soft mode of speaking, with 
the most varied range of inflexions and an 
enunciation which is as clear as the stroke of a 
crystal clock. You are not surprised, after 
conversing with him, to learn that he began 
his career as a teacher of elocution and music, 
and that his first ambition was to become a 
famous composer. 

Indeed, it was originally from his musical 
studies that he derived the suggestion of the 
telephone; for his analysis of the principles 
underlying differences of pitch in the human 
voice led to other investigations in phonetics, 
in the course of which he came upon the dis- 
covery of Helmholtz that vowel sounds could 
be reproduced by vibrating metal. The ques- 
tion arose at once in his mind: "If vowel 
sounds can be thus artificially transmitted, 
why not consonants also?" And with this be- 
gan the methodical procession of tests which, 
reinforced by discoveries made by others in 
the same and related lines of inquiry, resulted 
in the telephone, and brought the remotest 
—268— 



Alexander Graham Bell 



ends of the earth, to all intents, within speak- 
ing distance of each other. In the conquest 
of the air he has taken the same strides as in 
the enterprises more closely linked with his 
name. His experiments have been pretty 
carefully protected from public curiosity, but 
apparently have proceeded upon the basis of 
producing a burden-bearing dirigible kite, 
rather than the cigar-shaped balloons or the 
mechanical birds which have captured the 
world's fancy during the last few years. 

Naturally, the student of phonetics became 
interested in the relief of deafness. His 
father, Alexander Melville Bell, beginning 
life as a professor of elocution, by degrees 
evolved a system of universal speech, where- 
by any person with the normal equipment of 
vocal organs, whether able to hear or not, 
could be taught to produce at will every 
variety of sound and articulation of which a 
human being is capable. This led directly 
to the theory of a visible speech — that is, the 
possibility of enabling one person, with fair 
eyesight and intelligence, to read, from the 
motions of the lips, tongue, teeth, and throat 
of another, the words and sentences which 
— 269 — 



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these organs are forming, regardless of 
whether any sound is actually uttered or not. 
From this, again, it was but a step to a sys- 
tem of audible speech by a person who is 
dumb, provided only that his muteness is not 
due to the absence of essential organs. 

Alexander Graham Bell, as his father's as- 
sistant, acquired not only his mastery of his 
subject, but his enthusiasm as well, and ever 
since coming to this country in 1870 has de- 
voted time, thought, and means most gener- 
ously to the improvement of the condition of 
deaf mutes. He married a Miss Hubbard, 
who had lost both speech and hearing as the 
sequel to an illness of her childhood, and who 
became his most successful pupil. She is able 
to carry on a conversation by studying the 
face of her companion, and making audible 
responses which she cannot hear herself. Dr. 
Bell has weekly social gatherings at his house 
during the winter season, at which scientists, 
inventors, explorers, literary men, and other 
persons who "do things" come together to talk 
over whatever is new and striking in their 
several fields of endeavour; and one of the 
familiar sights on these occasions is Mrs. Bell 



Alexander Graham Bell 



listening to a speaker, either — if he be a dis- 
tant enunciator who keeps his face turned in 
her direction — by reading his remarks with 
her eyes, or getting what he says at second 
hand through its silent repetition by her hus- 
band sitting by her side. 

A recent philanthropic enterprise of Dr. 
Bell was interrupted by the outbreak of the 
European war and the mutual estrangement 
of the nations engaged in it. He has been for 
some years trying to induce our Government 
to promote an international agreement on a 
universal alphabet — that is, a union of all the 
peoples of the world in the use of one series of 
letters representative of sounds which shall 
be the same everywhere, so that any person 
who knows his own written language can read 
and write and pronounce all other written 
languages, not necessarily understanding them, 
but with the ability to convey the words to 
another person. A first step in this program, 
of course, would be the establishment of a uni- 
form and fixed relation of visible symbols to 
sounds in our English tongue, so that, for in- 
stance, "cough" will not be pronounced "cow" 
because "plough" is pronounced "plow." It 
— 271 — 



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is hoped that when the world's peace is fully 
restored, Dr. Bell will resume this efifort to- 
wards a better understanding among all man- 
kind. 

Washington, October 7, 1915. 



— 272- 



JOHN HAYS HAMMOND 

THE recent agitation over the infliction 
of the death penalty upon the leaders 
of the Irish insurrection, and the dis- 
cussion of the probable fate of Sir Roger Case- 
ment, must have had a peculiar reminiscent 
savour for a prominent citizen of Massachu- 
setts who spends so much of his time at the 
capital that he is commonly reckoned a Wash- 
ingtonian. The interesting feature of the 
case of John Hays Hammond is that he was 
condemned to die for a revolutionary plot 
which he not only did not take part in, but 
publicly discountenanced. 

Hammond has had a remarkable career. 
Born in San Francisco about sixty-one years 
ago, educated at the Sheffield Scientific School 
and at the Royal School of Mines in Freiburg, 
he early made gold-mining his specialty. Al- 
though in engineering circles he was very 
well known and highly regarded, the general 
public first became acquainted with him in 
—273— 



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1894, when accounts of his success in British 
South Africa began to drift into the leading 
newspapers of this country. These stories 
furnished a fresh illustration of how fortune 
often favours the right sort of young Ameri- 
can who, instead of moving westward with 
the sun, reverses the usual trend of migra- 
tion and goes back to the Old World to teach 
it a few modern methods. Count Rumford, 
Junius Morgan, George Peabody, and others 
had already tried this reversal and found it 
worth while. 

Some of his mining investigations in Mex- 
ico had brought Hammond into contact with 
English explorers and investors, and through 
this opening he was invited by one of the com- 
panies that were exploiting South Africa to 
go thither in its employ. He had not been 
long in his new environment before he at- 
tracted the attention of Cecil Rhodes, who 
offered him the management of the rich gold 
properties of the British South Africa Com- 
pany, at a rate of compensation which he was 
permitted to name himself, and which made 
the salary of the President of the United States 
look anaemic. But Rhodes was ambitious not 
—274— 



John Hays Hammond 



only to develop wealth, but to build up a po- 
litical empire, and in a very short time Ham- 
mond became interested in the public afifairs 
of the region, as a member of a Reform Com- 
mittee whose aim was to bring about a more 
just and intelligent administration of the local 
government in dealing with the outsiders who 
had come in there to improve the country in- 
dustrially. Having failed to effect any sub- 
stantial results, and conditions becoming con- 
tinually less and less tolerable, the Committee 
appealed to their British friends in an adjoin- 
ing state to come to their rescue. The appeal 
was interpreted to mean armed intervention, 
and Dr. Leander Jameson gathered his follow- 
ers and made the now historic raid into the 
Dutch domain. It was a foolish blunder, as 
Jameson has since declared, and, as he added, 
deserved the failure that overtook it. But its 
most serious personal consequences fell upon 
four conspicuous members of the Reform 
Committee, including Hammond, who were 
promptly arrested and tried for sedition. 
They pleaded guilty in the hope of obtaining 
clemency from the court, but without avail, 
and all four were sentenced to death. 
—275— 



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Hammond, who had no sympathy with the 
spirit of the raid and had boldly rebuked such 
manifestations as he had witnessed among the 
Englishmen with whom he was thrown, had so 
large a circle of friends in this country that 
the news of his impending fate aroused a 
storm of protest here. The members of both 
houses of Congress united in a letter to Presi- 
dent Krueger of the Transvaal Republic, 
praying for a pardon, and from other influen- 
tial American sources followed letters, memo- 
rials and resolutions in the same tenor. They 
moved Krueger a good deal, for he was a 
shrewd old fellow and had enough knowledge 
of the world to realize what such a demon- 
stration meant. His executive council, how- 
ever, was made up of stolid, narrow-visioned 
burghers who could see nothing in his argu- 
ments till he quietly laid down his trump 
card. 

''These men, when they are dead," said he, 
"will be of no more use to us than the soil 
they are buried in. If we let them live, we 
can trade with them and make money." 

His words gave his associates pause till they 
could weigh these considerations against each 
— 276 — 



John Hays Hammond 



other. When they finally came to a vote, the 
advocates of mercy had a majority of just one. 
Krueger proved his case when the sentences 
of death were reduced to periods of imprison- 
ment during which every civilized luxury the 
unfortunates procured cost them a fancy price, 
and later, when the four were pardoned on 
payment of fines that placed an aggregate of 
a half-million dollars in the Transvaal treas- 
ury. 

South Africa largely lost its charm for 
Hammond after this experience, and he con- 
cluded that Yankeeland was good enough for 
him. But he could not keep away from poli- 
tics, and has had a hand in all the chief ac- 
tivities of the Republican party since he came 
back, including what he thinks was a narrow 
escape from the Vice-Presidential nomina- 
tion when Taft ran for re-election. He has 
also had the distinction of being used as the 
hero of a story by Richard Harding Davis. 
He is still the short, stockily built, direct- 
mannered man his old friends have always 
called "J^ck," has lost nothing of his keen- 
ness of scent for an outcropping of auriferous 
ore, and retains the habit of reaching for his 
—277— 



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fishing-tackle when he wishes to go off some- 
where and do a little quiet thinking. 
Washington, August lo, igid. 



■278- 



DR. HARVEY W. WILEY 

Is this Dr. Wiley, 
They speak of so highly? 
Is this Dr. Wiley, of whom we've heard tell? 

YES, if you are looking at a man stand- 
ing six feet plus in heelless slippers, 
with other dimensions in propor- 
tion, a merry round face and plenty of black 
hair, who can crack a joke on any subject — 
including himself — or name and classify the 
ingredients of any compound you bring him, 
from a canned potpie to a bottle of dyspepsia 
bitters: that's he. Hear him talk. He'll tell 
the housewife how to cook her viands so as 
to get the most nourishment for the least out- 
lay, and her husband what wine may be drunk 
and what tobacco smoked without unduly 
poisoning the system. And when it is remem- 
bered that, though nearly seventy-two years 
old, he is a benedict of only five years' stand- 
ing and the father of a nice little family, 
there is no escaping the inference that here is 
—279— 



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a prophet who practises on himself what he 
preaches to others. Wiley declares that he 
belongs to the Hundred-Years-Old Club, 
every member of which takes a pledge, on 
joining, to live a whole century or consign his 
memory to everlasting disgrace. To all ap- 
pearance he is keeping in good and regular 
standing, and without resort to benzoate of 
soda or any other familiar preservative. 
More than that, he intimates that he has 
profited by his own experience, and has re- 
solved that his first-born son, Harvey, Jr., 
shall not waste a like amount of his life in 
celibacy; for he formally betrothed the lad, 
at the interesting age of one week, to the at- 
tractive baby daughter of a brother scientist. 
It is needless to say to the readers of the 
daily newspapers that Harvey Washington 
Wiley is the champion who for a whole gen- 
eration, sometimes alone and sometimes at the 
head of a corps of recruits, has defied all com- 
ers in the defence of our American pure-food 
stronghold; anybody who forgets the fact has 
only to wait a little, and his memory will be 
jogged — if by no one else, by Wiley himself, 
and Wiley will take his oath to it if necessary. 
—280— 



Dr. Harvey W . Wiley 



When he cannot find a dealer in drugs who 
has been putting "dope" into an ostensibly 
honest compound, he will stride off, bludgeon 
in hand, to hunt up some recreant dealer in 
foods who has been preserving his "new-laid 
eggs" with boric acid, or the distiller of a 
novel "blend" in whiskey. And if times are 
dull, and all such resources fail him, he will 
call for volunteers for a "poison squad," and 
put a number of adventurous and public- 
spirited youths upon an exclusive diet of vi- 
ands which he has publicly denounced as unfit 
for human consumption, so as to take notes of 
the phenomena thus induced, by way of re- 
inforcing his denunciation with horrible ex- 
amples. 

I have referred to Wiley as a prophet, and 
it is no mere figure of speech. He is never 
at a loss for a prophecy, though he realizes 
the precarious character of the forecasting 
habit continually indulged. When Fletcher- 
ism was at the height of its popularity, it was 
he who doused it with cold water by assuring 
the world that the coming man would bolt 
his meat foods unmasticated; and he scorned 
to answer the critic who wanted to know what 
— 281 — 



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to do with a ham sandwich. On another oc- 
casion he announced in an address: "We are 
rapidly approaching a state of affairs in this 
country when we shall be facing a mob in the 
streets instead of justice in a court of law." 
On the last day of February, 191 2, he asserted 
with vehemence that he should not resign his 
office as chief chemist of the Department of 
Agriculture, but walked out only fifteen days 
later. As recently as 1904, being bald him- 
self, he proceeded to prophesy that within a 
very few years the whole human race would 
be both hairless and toothless; but, chancing 
to go about bareheaded in the open air for a 
while, and thus letting the sun's rays reach his 
smothered scalp, he fatally discredited this 
prediction by raising a fresh crop of raven 
locks. 

He seems to have been a "kicker" from 
early days. As a young man he held a scien- 
tific professorship in an Indiana university, 
and was overhauled by the trustees because 
they deemed his non-attendance at morning 
chapel impious, and his love of riding a bicy- 
cle and playing baseball with the students 
— 282 — 



Dr. Harvey W, Wiley 



undignified. After he had explained his rea- 
sons for these offences, the board was ready to 
drop the matter; but he was not, and bade the 
institution farewell, to come to Washington 
and take the position he held for nearly thirty 
years. In the Department of Agriculture he 
was famous for stirring up shortcomings 
which most of his contemporaries were will- 
ing to ignore, and for the way he always hit 
back when interfered with. 

Wiley confesses the authorship of manifold 
literary contributions to science, which range 
from the liveliness of a volume of lyrics to the 
severity of a treatise on "Principles and Prac- 
tice," and include sixty Government bulletins 
and between two and three hundred miscel- 
laneous monographs. This array indicates 
that he is a good deal of a writer as well as a 
good deal of a talker. Some critics, indeed, 
accuse him of aspiring to be always in evi- 
dence. But he consoles himself for such ani- 
madversions with the reflection that the true 
crusader's post is not in the closet but in the 
market-place. And doubtless it is true that, 
for a reformer of his type and temperament, 
—283— 



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his methods are more effective than any which 
could be forced upon him by the conventions 
that govern the conduct of men cast in a dif- 
ferent mould. 

Washington, July 2j, igid. 



—284— 



SAMUEL GOMPERS 

BY keeping him so continually in the 
public eye as an industrial oracle, the 
European war has given one resident 
of Washington the time of his life. This is 
Samuel Gompers, cigar-maker, agitator, dip- 
lomatist, and president of the Federation of 
Labor. Nothing pleases him more than such 
publicity, for it is a valuable asset in his busi- 
ness. He has used it for years, with an effect 
undreamed of by people who do not come into 
hostile contact with him: witness his success- 
ful fight to procure immunity for labour 
unions under the Anti-Trust law. Congress 
dares not take a step which touches the labour 
question at its remotest edge without consult- 
ing Gompers. A former Commissioner of 
Indian Affairs, hoping to train some of his 
wards into a habit of self-support and teach 
them the value of a dollar, prepared plans for 
a series of public improvements on certain 
reservations — building roads, bridges, store- 
—285 — 



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houses, etc. — on which he was to use Indian 
labour at the current rates of pay; but, as most 
of his red workingmen had to come a long 
distance from home, it was found that an 
eight-hour day would not answer, so a ten- 
hour day, with only five working days in the 
week, was substituted. Some pettifogger pro- 
tested to the Secretary of the Interior that this 
arrangement violated the statute limiting to 
eight hours the working day of all labourers 
and mechanics employed on Government 
work. The Commissioner, therefore, pro- 
posed to procure an amendment making the 
statute inapplicable to work done by Indians 
on their own reservations for their own bene- 
fit. When he brought this measure before 
one of the appropriate committees of Con- 
gress, the first question put to him was: 
"Have you seen Gompers?" 

There was no help for it. See Gompers, or 
drop the subject. Gompers, accordingly, was 
seen. He vetoed the project at once. It 
availed not to point out to him that the local 
conditions were so unusual as to compel a 
resort to unusual methods; that the Indians 
were interfering with no other labourers, 
—286— 



Samuel Gompers 



since, unless the work were done by them, it 
would be left undone; or that the work was 
not Government work in the sense intended by 
the law, being charitable and educational 
only. A great principle was involved, Gom- 
pers declared in oratorical tones, and nothing, 
however philanthropic, could be permitted to 
get in its way. So the officer who had pock- 
eted his pride so far as to plead as a favour 
for what the Government should have de- 
manded as a right, had to abandon his enter- 
prise, and the Indians, who had enjoyed the 
bare beginnings of a new life, lapsed back 
into comparative idleness. 

In this incident we may read a fair measure 
of Gompers's intelligence, if we have not al- 
ready read it in his appearance. Note his 
big head, heavy foreign features, and stumpy 
frame. His face is as hard as a mask, his 
voice has nothing winsome in it, his manner 
is forbidding. We can hardly be surprised at 
learning that in the financial struggle of the 
early nineties he was on the side of independ- 
ent free coinage of silver by the United States, 
or that he found not a little to commend in 
Coxey's program of economic reforms. He 
—287— 



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has always opposed compulsory arbitration 
as a remedy for industrial troubles, lest it 
"might react dangerously against the progress 
of organized labour," which "has too slender 
means at its command to indulge in dubious 
experiments." One of the worst mistakes he 
has made in all his life was his failure to ad- 
vertise these theories when the ill-fated boy- 
cotts were declared against the Bucks Stove 
& Range Company and the Danbury hatters, 
or when the dynamite squad headed by John 
J. McNamara — for whom Gompers vouched 
as a worthy citizen — undertook their murder- 
ous campaign of terrorism a few years ago. 

To do Gompers justice, his most conspicu- 
ous faults are probably due more to his slow 
perception of relations and issues which most 
persons apprehend by instinct, than to delib- 
erate obduracy. In spite of his hard-handed 
creed, he is not personally a man of violence. 
I do not recall any instance where he has re- 
sorted, in his industrial warfare, to the Ger- 
man submarine practice of firing without 
warning. He condemns mercilessly the meth- 
ods of the I. W. W. Whether he would be- 
come a Socialist of the advanced type if that 
—288— 



Samuel Gompers 



offered the only opening for his work for 
labour reform, it is hard to say — perhaps he 
would. For the present, however, he sees no 
need of revolutionizing the whole structure of 
society in order to make life more comfort- 
able for the wage-earner; the existing organ- 
ization, based on the competitive idea, seems 
to him to fit human nature better than any 
novel scheme of things evolved from mere 
ratiocination without the support of common 
experience. 

Gompers is of Dutch ancestry, but was him- 
self born in England. This is undoubtedly 
what makes him feel so competent to teach 
Americans the way of industrial salvation. 
He combines in his vocabulary a pretty fair 
assortment of several languages spoken by our 
immigrant labourers, so as to be able to make 
himself understood by almost any restless au- 
dience he is called to address on his favourite 
topic. The perfume of the cigars which he 
smokes very steadily, when contrasted with 
the neatness of their wrappers, indicates that 
his eye is more highly cultivated than his taste. 
Washington, September 23, IQ15. 

— 289— 



TERENCE V. POWDERLY 

THE failure of Gompers to refresh his 
wilted prestige as a politician by car- 
rying Maine for the Democrats must 
have given a thrill of real satisfaction to one 
man in Washington w^ho used to be as con- 
stantly in the glare of the footlights as Gom- 
pers is today, but of late years has been only 
dimly discernible in the shadov^s of the back- 
ground. This is Terence Vincent Powderly, 
once General Master Workman of the 
Knights of Labor, nov/ chief of a division in 
the Bureau of Immigration, which is per- 
forming an obscure but useful function in 
steering immigrants to the parts of the United 
States where they ought to go. Gompers's 
recent self-exploitation in connection with the 
threatened railway strike recalled to the mem- 
ories of many old-timers a great strike of 
thirty years ago, from the ruinous effects of 
which the Missouri Pacific Railway, previ- 
ously a fine property, has not yet recovered. 
—290— 



Terence V. Powderly 



The quarrel started with the discharge of an 
employe of the car-shops in Marshall, Tex., 
who belonged to the Knights, and, as that or- 
ganization ramified widely through the coun- 
try, a period of unrest and violence every- 
where followed. Strikes for an eight-hour 
day occurred in all sorts of industries, and in 
Chicago a mob numbering eight thousand at- 
tacked the McCormick Reaper Works so sav- 
agely that the police were powerless to dis- 
perse it without killing several persons. The 
next night came the Haymarket riot, with its 
tragic aftermath, which dampened for a little 
the virulence of the professional agitators. 
All through the Missouri Pacific struggle 
Powderly was the dominant figure; and 
peaceful shareholders, opening their news- 
papers every morning, were wont to turn first 
to the column headed with his name in thick 
black letters, to see what chance they still had 
of getting back any of the savings they had in- 
vested in the road. 

Jay Gould was president of the company, 

and when Congress presently undertook to 

investigate the matters in controversy, and 

subpoenaed Gould and Powderly simultane- 

— 291 — 



National Miniatures 



ously to testify at a committee hearing, the 
contrast between the two men was a fascinat- 
ing study. Powderly, an alert, nimble-witted 
citizen of Irish descent, of full man's stature 
and stockily built, blond in type, with a ruddy 
complexion, a heavy, drooping moustache; 
and the faintest possible suggestion of an an- 
cestral brogue, sat on one side of the long 
table, faced from the opposite side by Gould, 
an undersized, weasel-like man, whose colour- 
less countenance was half-hidden by its frame 
of dark hair, moustache and full beard, and 
whose shrewd, uncertain little eyes peered 
forth from beneath awning brows. The man- 
ners of the antagonists were about as unlike 
as one might expect from looking into their 
faces. Powderly was smooth, complacent, 
voluble. To all appearance, he wished to 
give the committee not only every bit of in- 
formation it desired, but a trifle more for good 
measure. Gould was wary, furtive, non-com- 
mittal, except on a few points where his deep- 
est-seated vanities were stirred. He acted 
much as a man might who had found himself, 
without his own seeking, in the midst of a 
camp of deadly foes, and was not entirely sure 
— 292 — 



Terence V . Powderly 



which one of them had drawn the lot to 
butcher him. When a question was put to 
Powderly, he answered boldly, in a full voice, 
often with a gesture, of which a telling part 
was bringing his open palm down upon the 
table; and every time he did this, Gould, 
whose answers were pried out of him piece- 
meal and in a smothered tone, looked as if he 
were going to jump. The spectacle was one 
which nobody who witnessed it will ever for- 
get, and derives some historic value from be- 
ing, perhaps, the first in that national temple 
of inquisition where Labour with a big L, 
and Corporate Capital with a big double-C, 
confronted each other officially at so close 
quarters. 

Powderly once explained to me how he 
came to leave the trade union to which, as 
a machinist, he originally belonged, and join 
the Knights of Labor. As I remember it, 
some emergency set him to ruminating on the 
selfish side of unionism, every union looking 
out as it does for number one — in other words, 
for the particular trade from which it is re- 
cruited. The Knights, on the other hand, had 
for their basic idea the community of interest 
—293— 



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of all manual workers. Anything, for in- 
stance, which puts a lot of machinists out of 
employment affects the miners also, and the 
foundry hands, because less coal and iron are 
needed for the machine-shops; the spinners, 
the weavers, the garment-makers, the opera- 
tives in the shoe-factories, the millers' men, 
the employes of the packinghouses and can- 
neries, because the machinists' families have 
less to spend on food and clothing; and so on 
through the industrial chapter, the prosperity 
of every trade depending on the prosperity of 
other trades. A realization of this fact tends, 
he argued, to prevent strikes for foolish rea- 
sons. It also affords a logical ground for mak- 
ing common cause among a number of trades 
when trouble does come. Possibly his views 
were never better illustrated than by his own 
declaration, widely published during his era 
of supremacy, that, when a workman empties 
a bottle of beer, it is his duty to break the bot- 
tle, so as to create for some other workman the 
job of making a new one! 

Powderly's high standing in the labour 
world suffered seriously when he carried his 
leadership into politics. He was more suc- 
—294— 



Terence V . Powderly 



cessful, perhaps, than Gompers has been thus 
far, but he has had so many ups and downs 
that, in figuring the net total, one is moved to 
wonder whether the downs have not at least 
taken the taste out of the ups. Gompers 
would do well to review the vicissitudes of his 
old rival before carrying his own campaigns 
much farther, in the light of the possibility 
that Organized Society may have some rights 
as sacred as the rights of Organized Labour, 
and a not less decisive way of asserting them 
when its patience has been overtaxed. 
Washington, September 28, IQ16. 



—295- 



W. BOURKE COCKRAN 

WILLIAM BOURKE COCK- 
RAN, who has been widely ex- 
ploited in the press as a defender 
of the Mooneys in the San Francisco bomb- 
plot trial, must often be reminded of Byron's 

Thrice happy he whose name has been well spelt 
In the despatch — 

for no one has suffered more than Cockran, 
ever since he first launched his engaging elo- 
quence upon a listening world, from distor- 
tions of his simple patronymic into Cock- 
rane, Cockrain, Cochran, Cochrane, and other 
forms evolved by the ingenuity of news edi- 
tors. But, however the papers may differ in 
their spellings, they are practically unanimous 
in their judgment that he is without a rival as 
a public speaker. This does not mean that his 
oratory is convincing to a mind which is be- 
yond capture by phrases, but only that he is 
fascinating, and that the longer you subject 
yourself to his spell the more of an appetite 
— 296 — 



W, Bourke Cockran 



you have for what is still to come. Part of 
this efifect is due to his presence, which is im- 
pressive, and part to his voice, which is bass 
music flavoured with the faintest hint of a 
brogue, but most of it to his faculty for de- 
scriptive epigrams, and to the surprises he 
springs upon his audience from time to time 
by giving his argument a sudden and startling 
twist back upon itself. I recall hearing him 
denounce in Washington the income-tax proj- 
ect of 1894. His plea was not based on the 
burdens already borne by the rich which it 
would be unfair to increase, but went clear to 
the opposite aspect of the case, complaining 
because the poor, having no incomes large 
enough to tax, would be shut off from their 
due share of participation in the support of 
the Government! He represented a district 
in New York in which a large element lived 
on day's wages, and he was proud, he de- 
clared, to be the champion of Cherry Hill 
against Murray Hill. 

This recalled to my memory a case he ar- 
gued in the early days of his law practice, as 
counsel for a railway company sued by an old 
woman who had been run down by a train and 
—297— 



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badly crippled. She had fixed her damages 
at $25,000; but the company was hoping to 
get this reduced to $15,000, and its president 
was almost paralyzed when Cockran, after 
producing such evidence as he could to show 
that the trainmen were not to blame, addressed 
to the jury a warning not to let sentiment sway 
them from the strict line of logic. "If we 
were at fault," said he, with marked delibera- 
tion, "then $25,000 would not be a penny too 
much to give this woman for the terrible dis- 
figurement she has sufifered; but if the acci- 
dent was unavoidable, then it would be crimi- 
nal to compel us to pay for what we could not 
help. Remember, gentlemen, that you are 
under oath to deal justly between the parties 
to this case, and you must make it either $25,- 
000 or nothing at all!" Probably two-thirds 
of the audience agreed with the frightened 
president in expecting this audacious chal- 
lenge to bring an award of full damages, and 
were as astonished as he when the jury re- 
turned, with very brief delay, a verdict in fa- 
vour of the company. 

I heard Cockran make the speech with 
which he held fifteen thousand persons spell- 
—298 — 



W. Bourke Cochran 



bound in the rude wooden wigwam on the 
Chicago lake-front at the close of the Demo- 
cratic National Convention of 1892. It was 
about three in the morning, and all the dele- 
gates and most of the spectators had been there 
since four o'clock of the afternoon before, a 
terrific thunderstorm having raged for a large 
part of the night; yet neither their weary 
bodies nor their strained nerves let their atten- 
tion wander as his facile tongue set forth rea- 
son after reason why the Convention ought 
not to nominate Cleveland for President. 
They knew as well as he that all this was a 
waste of words, but not a score of his hearers, 
however unfriendly, would willingly have 
foregone the treat he offered, of which the 
acme was reached when he asserted : 

"Mr. Cleveland is popular — " 

The Tammany men looked blank, and the 
other faction leaned forward to catch the com- 
ing confession; but Cockran, pausing just a 
second, finished his sentence: 

" — in Republican States, because his De- 
mocracy is not offensive to Republicans"; and 
went on : 

I believe he is a man of extraordinary popularity on 
—299— 



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every day of the year — except election-day. It is a 
popularity which may be described as tumultuous, but it 
is not calculated to produce votes. It is calculated to 
produce enthusiasm for four months before the conven- 
tion, and disappointment for four years thereafter! 

Cockran is of Irish birth, French education, 
Manhattan Island politics. With this mix- 
ture of antecedents, it is scarcely strange that 
he has been found in a variety of partisan 
affiliations during his public career of nearly 
thirty years. He fought Tammany Hall till 
it took him in; stayed in it till Boss Croker 
made it uncomfortable for him, and has been 
alternately for and against it ever since; sup- 
ported the Democratic ticket with a poor 
grace in 1892 because Cleveland headed it, 
and the Republican ticket in 1896 because he 
could not stomach Bryan and free-silver coin- 
age; boomed Bryan in 1900 on the anti- 
imperialist pronouncements of the platform, 
but visited the Philippines in Taft's time and 
came back with his views of imperialism made 
over; supported Parker in 1904 because 
Roosevelt was threatening American institu- 
tions with demoralization or destruction, but 
got under the Progressive banner about the 
—300— 



W. Bourke Cockran 



time that Roosevelt's grip on it was loosening. 
One is sometimes tempted to wonder how far 
he might have gone politically if he had not 
spent so much of his life in just catching up 
with himself. Persons of a skeptical turn of 
mind, moreover, are suspicious of the sincerity 
of a man who can make so lightning-like a 
series of changes; but Cockran's philosophy is 
doubtless much like that of the Indian who, 
found wandering about the desert in search of 
his home, refused to admit that he was lost, 
because "Inyun here; tepee lost." If party 
conditions did not change so often, Mr. Cock- 
ran wouldn't — perhaps. 

Cockran was laid up in the midst of one 
campaign by an accident in riding. As he de- 
scribed it, the horse started to run away, and 
he threw himself ofif to save his life, landing 
face downward in the middle of a gravelled 
road, and receiving some painful bruises. No 
one who has seen him astride a horse could 
marvel at what happened: a more distressed 
figure it would be hard to imagine, looking as 
if he were bent on reaching destination ahead 
of his steed, and full of anxiety over the pros- 
pect. With a dog he appears to better advan- 
—301— 



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tage, for he is fond of dogs. Indeed, the story 
among his friends is that his reason for taking 
up gratuitously in 1890 the final appeal of the 
murderer Kemmler, the first victim of the 
death-chair, was that the preliminary experi- 
ments with the electric current as a death- 
dealer had been made on dogs, which endured 
tortures before the decisive shock put them 
out of their misery; and from this he argued 
that electrocution was a cruel and unusual 
punishment within the meaning of the Consti- 
tution. 

A head of Napoleonic weight; brows with 
the upward and inward slant that has marked 
those of Henry Ward Beecher and other fa- 
mous swayers of multitudes; a broad jaw; a 
mouth which, though rather heavy, is notably 
flexible; a frame six feet in height with a 
breadth in proportion: here is the picture of 
the man as the public see him. And it must be 
said for the quality of his work as a speaker 
that, unlike the majority of professional ora- 
tors, he is equally effective whether he stands 
in the midst of a crowd on the same level, or 
mounted higher and facing them from a stage. 
Washington, September 2j, igij. 
—302— 



